New Supercritical Fluid Extractor for the Processing of Natural Products

Supercritical Fluid Technologies (SFT) is pleased to introduce a new pilot scale supercritical extractor for the processing of natural products. The SFT-NPX-10 is designed to simplify the extraction of a wide variety of natural products, and to facilitate the transition from laboratory scale equipment to production processing systems.

The SFT-NPX-10 is designed to perform supercritical fluid extractions in either single or dual 10 Liter sample vessels with single or dual separators, resulting in maximum efficiency. A Coriolis mass flow meter guarantees precise mass flow measurement.  A pneumatic CO₂ pump with an integral pre-chiller is used to maximize pumping efficiency.  A programmable controller is available as an upgrade for automated regulation of pressure, temperature and process cycles.

Using supercritical CO₂ to perform extractions on botanicals, herbs, spices and other natural product materials has significant benefits over the use of traditional liquid solvents. While the supercritical fluid possesses many of the same characteristics of a liquid solvent, it adds the benefits of high diffusivity and pressure tunable solvency power. Additionally, no residual solvents are in either the extract or remaining biomass. There is no need to perform a distillation step since, upon dropping pressure, the CO₂ becomes a gas. The extracted material is pure and in its natural state. The CO₂ may be safely vented or optionally recycled for even greater efficiency. Since the solvency power of the fluid is pressure dependent, it is possible to “fractionate” to obtain multiple compositions from a single raw material. This makes practical some separations that are difficult or impossible to do with traditional liquid solvent and distillation processing.