Supercritical Fluid Processing of Fats and Oils

Temelli, F. 2009. Perspectives on supercritical fluid processing of fats and oils, J. Supercrit. Fluids 47 583-590. 

Temelli, F. Perspectives on supercritical fluid processing of fats and oils. 

In addition to common organic solvents, supercritical fluids (scf s) can be used for a great variety of extraction processes [158 165], Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), mostly carried out with SC-CO2 as eluant, has many advantages compared to extractions with conventional solvents. The solvent strength of a supercritical fluid can easily be controlled by the pressure and temperature used for the extraction at a constant temperature, extraction at lower pressures will favour less polar analytes, while extraction at higher pressures will favour more polar and higher molar mass analytes. As supercritical fluids such as CO2 and N2O have low critical temperatures (tc = 31 °C and 36 °C, respectively), SFE can be performed at moderate temperatures to extract thermolabile compounds. Typical industrial applications using SC-CO2 include caffeine extraction from coffee beans [158] as well as fat and oil extraction from plant and animal tissues [165]. For some physical properties of supercritical solvents, see Section 3.2. 

There are many literature reports on industrial uses of supercritical fluids, and many patents have been issued for various uses of supercritical fluids as solvents in extraction processes. Randall (1) prepared an excellent review on the uses and patents issued up to 1982 in the area of supercritical fluid extraction and chromatography. Many of these applications deal with natural products such as flavors, fragrances, oils and fats, or the removal of unwanted components from natural materials such as caffeine from coffee or tea and nicotine from tobacco. 

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