Food additives obtained by supercritical extraction from natural sources

This work addresses thermodynamic modeling, simulation and optimization of supercritical extraction of fish oil fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) with ethane as alternative solvent to carbon dioxide. The objective is the production of pharmaceutical grade concentrates of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docohexaenoic acid (DHA) esters, which are the most valuable omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid esters. The pharmaceutical grade concentrates can be obtained at relatively low cost to be incorporated as food additives. The Group Contribution Equation of State (GC-EoS) has been extended to include ethane–ester interaction parameters. Process optimizations have been performed for a simple column-separator scheme, for both carbon dioxide and ethane. Numerical results have shown higher solubility of FAEE in ethane, as well as a slightly better selectivity to EPA and DHA.