Present and future of supercritical fluid extraction

After the initial euphoria of the late 1980s and 1990s, SFE has consolidated as a powerful tool for the analysis of environmental, pharmaceutical, polymer and, especially, food samples (particularly fat analyses, which have boosted SF extractor sales recently) [17]. Notwithstanding its major restrictions (especially in relation to the extraction of polar analytes and the treatment of natural samples), SFE can undoubtedly expedite the pretreatment of solid samples with the aid of special approaches to the extraction of medium-polar and polar analytes. Foreseeing the direction in which SFE applications will move in the future entails considering the nature of its latest uses. 

Coupled supercritical CO,-subcritical water systems may facilitate the class-selective extraction of non-polar substances and families of compounds of different polarity by adjusting the temperature of the water. 

The development of new analyte collection methods using decreased amounts of solvent — and hence providing more concentrated extracts — is one other focus of current SFE research [43]. 

Berger, Packed Column SFC, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge (1995). 

Anton and C. Berger, Supercritical Fluid Chromatography with Packed Columns. Techniques and Applications, Marcel Dekker, New York (1997). 

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