Supercritical extraction of solid materials: A practical correlation related with process scaling

The supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of vegetal raw materials is a large field of research, innovation and entrepreneurial developments. Optimization of process conditions is usually accomplished in analytical or laboratory scale equipment. Although SFE scaling is essential to attain industrial applications, studies in the literature are scarce. In this work, the kinetic behavior of 19 overall extraction curves (OEC's), obtained by the authors in previous works using NOVALINDUS Platform SFE facilities, and a set of 39 OEC's published by other authors, were considered all together to study SFE scaling. A general trend between the solvent flow rate and Barton kinetic constant was obtained for all extraction curves included in the data base, which comprise 10 different plant materials, temperatures in the range 298-333 K, pressures of 10-30 MPa, extractor volumes from 50 to 5200 cm3, particle diameters from 250 to 1400 μm and bed porosity in the range 0.59-0.97.