Supercritical Fluids for Essential oils – Flavors and Fragrances

The use of essential oils has become "essential" for modern living. Essential oils can be primary ingredients in perfumes for cosmetics or soaps and detergents. They form the basis of the spices in our foods.

So then why the interest in using supercritical fluids (i.e. CO₂):

• No Solvent residue. No health hazard. Maintains a "natural" state.
  As with natural products, SCF CO₂ extracts the essential oils more efficiently than petroleum based solvents, but, maybe more important upon returning to an ambient state, the CO₂ becomes a gas, leaving no residue. The flavor or fragrance is in its unadulterated state. There is no solvent taste or smell.
• Mild Extraction Conditions – 31°C temperature
  With temperatures less than body temperature (37°C), little thermal degradation of sensitive compounds occurs. Steam distillation is used in many current procedures, but with this exposure to temperatures over 100°C destroy, many of the “top notes” are destroyed or are swept away, severely reducing their yield.
• Fractionation - easy using only CO₂ - CO₂ is a "tunable solvent"
  Load the feedstock into an extraction vessel only once and then by only changing pressure of the SCF CO₂, you can make it have the solubility characteristics of a myriad of different petroleum based solvents. You don’t need to add or change solvents.

Sometimes SCF CO₂ can be used in conjunction with more traditional methods such as soaking perfume feedstocks in methanol or some other alcohol for a period of time. The alcohol containing the extracted the perfumes (essential oils) and accompanying waxes is then decanted and evaporated, leaving a concrete. The essential oils can easily be separated from the wax with SCF CO₂. Because of the low temperature, the process gives high recoveries.

Want to learn more? Contact us and we'll help you incorporate Green Chemistry with Supercritical Fluids into your processes!

Read about the other ways SCF is being used. Supercritical Fluids will change the way you work!

Applied Separations offers a full line of SFE systems to meet the needs in your laboratory.

Spe-ed SFE Prime
Applied Separations has created the first teaching tool for Supercritical Fluids. Safe and affordable, this instrument is perfect for the classroom.

Supercritical Fluids (SCF) Education
As thought-leaders in the world of Supercritical Fluids, Applied Separations strikes to share its knowledge and experience to further the use of Supercricial Fluids.

Laboratory Instruments
Applied Separations has the instruments you need in your laboratory to handle the most complex to the most straight-forward SCF projects.

Pilot Plants: Small Production
The basic supercritical pilot plant is a "no frills" caster-mounted system for the budgetminded. You, as the user, determine the size of the system...

Industrial Scale Production
Applied Separations will work with you to pin-point your needs and determine the feasibility of your project.

Metal Injection Molding
Supercritical Fluids will revolutionize the debinding process.

Accessories
Not only do we offer SCF instruments, but a full line of accessories the customize your SCF instruments are also available.

Applications
We have compiled a comprehensive list of SCF applications available for free. Click here to view the list of the SCF applications you can put to use immediately in your lab.

Let Green-I-Am introduce you to the world of SCF!

Virtual Video Warehouse What is Supercritical Fluid Extraction: A look at this green technology that uses SCF How to pack a vessel: Learn how to effectively pack a vessel for any of the Spe-edSFE instruments in our line. The Spe-ed SFE Prime from Applied Separations: Learn about this low cost instrument, created especially for the educational market. Teaching Environmentally Benign Extraction Technologies with a Cost Effective, User Friendly Instrument: This paper, presented at ACS 2008, describes the fundamentals of the supercritical fluid extraction process and the implementation of this environmentally friendly, green chemistry technique, using the low cost, student-friendly Spe-ed SFE Prime. The "Green" Extraction of Oils from Natural Products Using Supercritical Fluids: Learn how to use SCF for natural product extractions from this poster, presented at ACS 2008. SCF Product Line from Applied Separations: Check out the extensive line of Spe-edSFE instruments available from Applied Separations.    More on ASInteractive...

What is SCF? Carbon dioxide is in its supercritical fluid state when both the temperature and pressure equal or exceed the critical point of 31°C and 73 atm (see diagram). In its supercritical state, CO2 has both gas-like and liquid-like qualities, and it is this dual characteristic of supercritical fluids that provides the ideal conditions for extracting compounds with a high degree of recovery in a short period of time. By controlling or regulating pressure and temperature, the density, or solvent strength, of supercritical fluids can be altered to simulate organic solvents ranging from chloroform to methylene chloride to hexane. This dissolving power can be applied to purify, extract, fractionate, infuse, and recrystallize a wide array of materials. Because CO2 is non-polar, a polar organic co-solvent (or modifier) can be added to the supercritical fluid for processing polar compounds. By controlling the level of pressure/ temperature/ modifier, supercritical CO2 can dissolve a broad range of compounds, both polar and non-polar.