Azeotropic CO2 + ethane solvent mixture as supercritical extraction media for orange peel oil deterpenation

MARIANA FORTUNATTI-MONTOYA; GRANONE, LUIS I.; PABLO E. HEGEL; SELVA PEREDA

Conferencia; XII Iberoamerican Conference on Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties for Process Design; 2022

Universidad de Campinas

Supercritical technologies have become attractive and economically viable alternatives for the processing of natural products during the last few years. CO2 is the most used supercritical fluid because it is inexpensive, non-flammable, non-hazardous at low exposure levels, and it is readily available at high purity. According to several authors, the fractionation of orange peel oil by supercritical CO2 (SCCO2) is technically feasible at pressures between 88 bar and 110 bar and temperature between 303 K and 333 K. On the other hand, ethane has also been proposed as an alternative solvent for the deterpenation of citrus fruit essential oils. According to previous studies, the use of ethane rather than CO2 enables obtaining five-fold and ten-fold oils at lower pressure (ca. 60 bar) and with substantially lower solvent consumption. The main drawback of using ethane as solvent is its flammability, however, mixtures of CO2+ethane can be design as non-flammable solvent for the deterpenation of citrus oils. Particularly, this is the case of the azeotropic CO2+ethane mixture, with the additional advantage that it can be recycled minimizing changes in the solvent composition, which is key for achieving an stable operation.