Supercritical Fluids Extraction - Chemac Inc.

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Supercritical Fluids

Extractions breakthrough...

Most industrial-scale separation processes employ energy-intensive methods, such as distillation. The chemical and petroleum industries consume 5.8 quads of energy per year. Distillation accounts for 95% of all separation processes consuming 2.52 quads of energy annually, which makes it imperative to seek innovative, energy-saving and environmentally benign separation techniques such as Supercritical CO2 Technology.

When carbon dioxide is below the critical parameters, (Pc=73.8 atm and Tc=31.1o C) two distinct phases exist, liquid and vapor. By increasing the system temperature, the liquid expands and the two phases become less distinct forming a new phase, which is known as the Supercritical State. This Supercritical State has very powerful solvent properties of gas compressed to its critical point, defined by the pressure and temperature. A Supercritical State has a useful combination of liquid-like density and solvency, and gas-like viscosity, diffusivity, compressibility and lack of surface tension. Therefore, CO2 rapidly penetrates substrates and dissolves a wide range of chemicals. This critical region of CO2 is characterized by an ability to control the solvent power with only minor changes in pressure and temperature, resulting in more extracts selectivity. A reverse process occurs by decreasing the system temperature resulting in a phase separation between the liquid and the vapor.

CO2 is the most often investigated and used supercritical fluid because it is environmentally benign, energy-efficient and provides cost-efficient processes.

Some additional advantages of CO2 are:

Neither carcinogenic nor corrosive to human tissues
A naturally occurring fluid that is chemically inert and physiologically compatible
Not flammable, does not explode and is extremely stable
A safer alternative to many of the chemicals traditionally used for separation processes
Relatively inexpensive and very economical, over 90% can be recovered and reused in our processes
Energy conservative because it has a lower evaporation temperature than most organic solvents
A solvent with higher diffusion coefficients, which leads to higher extraction and reaction rates
A gentle solvent for treatment of temperature-sensitive natural substances, which can be separated with high purity while retaining aroma

From inception to a steady-state of operation...

Experiences with CO2 Technology have led us to an increased degree of sophistication that we apply to the engineering and commissioning of Supercritical CO2 processing plants. Due to the diversity of products, process conditions and requirements, our systems are often custom designed, or case specific. A number of scientific principles and techniques are basic to the treatment of the system operations. Some are elementary physical and chemical laws, and others are special techniques we implement in system operations.

We combine theory and practice to design CO2 processing systems that can be:

Fabricated
Assembled
Operated
Maintained

Unmatched experience in implementing CO2 processes to deliver:

Application Research and Development
Process Engineering and Design
Project management for commissioning, installation and startup

Operation of our custom designed CO2 systems is: Safe, Efficient, and Economical.

Turnkey processing systems:

Laboratory, Pilot, and Production Scale
Manual, Semi- or Fully-Automated
Modular, Platform, and Skid-Mounted

From raw materials to essential extracts...

With the tremendous advances in Supercritical CO2 Technology that have been made in the last few decades, there is significant potential for the use of the technology for materials processing, reactions and separations.

Supercritical CO2 can:

Extract chemicals from solutions and essential ingredients from various feedstocks
Reduce hydrocarbon solvent consumption and increase throughput in preparatory chromatographic separation
Remove and recover solvents to make high surface area novel materials
Destroy hazardous to reduce disposal costs significantly
Replace environmentally unfriendly Freon as cleaning solvent, which eliminates the need to wet and dry while reducing the energy consumption considerably
Increase the reaction rates and provide easy separations in polymerization, hydrogenation, nitration and alkylation
Dye polymeric materials and recover the unused pigments
Provide better control of particle size and produce low-bulk density particles