Estudo da potencialidade da extração de produtos naturais utilizando CO2 supercrítico

Abstract

This study presents a work about different industrial segments that can use extraction with supercritical fluid as one of its stages in this process. Researches were carried out in the pharmaceutical and food development areas so as to evaluate its operation potential, carrying out extractions of substances out of a matrix as, for example, obtaining essential oils from leaves and seeds, and the purification of eatable vegetable oils and though the elimination of fatty acid and pigments. Three processes were sorted to be researched. The first one aims to obtain an experiment data for the deacidification and clarification of palm oil, where out of researches previously developed by this laboratory and from combinations of the operating conditions, which time was determined, also temperature and pression where carried out the major efficiency in the extraction process. The second project aimed to obtain the avocatines, a family with antibiotics characteristics substances from the avocado core, so as to attain an extract with the major concentration as possible of such compounds through the variation of the operating conditions. It was developed an online extraction and analysis system in a gas chromatography (GC) thereto. Therefore, the one can identify and quantify the extracted product. Essential oils from piperaces and mirtaces were obtained with a chromatographic profile alike those ones obtained by traditional methods as the hydrodestilation one. As a complement on the study of the potentiality of the supercritical extraction, it was developed a thermodynamic model to the deacidification of the eatable food, using the Peng- Robinson State Equation so as to calculate the gas-liquid equilibrium of the five fatty acids in supercritical CO2 . The results obtained with all the applications show that the extraction with supercritical fluids can be an alternative process of great interest in the medication and food industry, as long as it deals about an operation that conservates its initial features of the raw material or because it is about a highly selective extraction.