Supercritical fluid extraction advantages over conventional

Several researchers have combined the separating power of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) with more informative spectroscopic detectors. For example, Pinkston et. al. combined SFC with a quadrupole mass spectrometer operated in the chemical ionization mode to analyze poly(dimethylsiloxanes) and derivatized oligosaccharides (7). Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) provides a nondestructive universal detector and can be interfaced to SFC. Taylor has successfully employed supercritical fluid extraction (SFE)/SFC with FTIR dectection to examine propellants (8). SFC was shown to be superior over conventional gas or liquid chromatographic methods. Furthermore, SFE was reported to have several advantages over conventional liquid solvent extraction (8). Griffiths has published several... 

The last two decades have seen an increased interest in the use of supercritical fluids in separation science. Supercritical C02 has often been employed as a naturally occurring medium for the separation, purification, and determination of organic substances in environmental samples. However, there are only limited reports on the use of supercritical fluid as solvent in the separation of metal ions from solutions as well as various solid matrices. The supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) technology offers several advantages over conventional solvent-based methods, including the ability to extract radionuclides directly from solids, easy separation of solutes from C02, and minimization of waste generation. It can easily be removed from the extracted substances by degasification under atmospheric pressure and temperature. 

The use of supercritical fluids in extraction processes has become well established. Until now, the extraction of liquids, as for example vitamins or vegetable edible oils, has been carried out in countercurrent columns. Dense gases offer several advantages over conventional solvents such as selective dissolving power, reduced thermal stress of the products or its physiological harmlessness. A supercritical fluid also has a density close to those for liquids, the viscosity is nearly 100 times lower and the diffusivity is up to 100 times higher than those of ordinary liquids as can be seen in table 1. 

Supercritical fluid extraction offers several advantages over conventional extraction processes. The extraction is carried out at high pressures and then the extract is usually recovered by lowering the pressure, as the solubility is a strong function of fluid pressure. The compositions of the extracts are different from those from the liquid extraction. Supercritical fluid extraction has been well accepted for coffee decaffeination and is being applied in other food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical applications. Supercritical carbon dioxide is an environmentally benign nonflammable fluid. 

The advantages of supercritical fluid extraction over conventional solvents is that the supercritical fluids have a higher diffusion rate than liquids, lower viscosity than liquids, and higher vapor pressure that allows easy evaporation of solvent. The lower viscosities and higher diffusion rates of supercritical... 

The properties of supercritical fluids that make them useful chromatographic mobile phases also make their use as extraction solvents an attractive option for polymer analysis. The low viscosities and high solute diffusivities allow efficient mass transfer during extraction, and the relatively low extraction temperatures reduce the risk of analyte degradation. Thus, the extraction of polymer additives from polymer matrices by using supercritical fluids has many advantages over conventional liquid solvent extraction, with the potential of higher recoveries and shorter analysis times. The further combination... 

Based on the polarity difference between CO2 and the interior of the micelles, w/c microemulsions have found many applications as extraction media. Furthermore, by modifying pressure and temperature, solvent quality may be changed and it becomes, therefore, possible to exert a real control over the extraction process uptake of solutes inside micelles may be varied. This may be of use for separations/extractions involving bio-chemicals and proteins. In conventional solvents their separation from the reaction medium can be quite complicated, involving tedious processes such as fluid-fluid extraction, decantation, chromatography column, filtration, precipitation. Use of supercritical fluid technology with extraction in reverse micelles seems advantageous for proteins (e.g. 19, 76). This process was also used for the extraction of metals (77-79) and more recently of copper from a filter paper surface (1). 

Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) is a relatively recent advance in sample preparation for trace environmental analysis. This techiuque uses conventional solvents at elevated pressures and temperatures to extract solid samples quickly. The process takes advantage of the increased analyte solubilities at temperatures well above the boiling points of common solvents. Under these conditions, the kinetic processes for the desorption of analytes from the matrix are accelerated. Currently a commercial unit is available in which automated extractions can be carried out on 24 samples sequentially (Richter et al., 1995, 1996). This technique offers some significant advantages over SEE and MAP. SEE uses supercritical CO2, which is a nonpolar fluid, whereas MAP requires the presence of a polar solvent that couples with microwave to promote heating. By comparison, ASE uses the same solvent as traditional Soxhlet extractions, which means a (firect transfer of methodology is feasible without any of the restrictions or limitations of the two other methods. Method development time is therefore shortened. 

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