Supercritical Processing of Plant Materials: Applications to the Extraction and Fractionation of Natural Products

During the last decades, supercritical fluid extraction has received especial attention mainly due to its direct application in food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. Regarding to environmental and processing regulations, supercritical fluids are a very attractive alternative to conventional extraction and refining methods.Agricultural processes result in large quantities of several by-products, which are often under utilized. Several organic natural components can be found in food processing by-products and, with additional treatment, can change from a low-value status to a high revenue stream of nutraceutical materials, such as phytosterols, oryzanol, triglycerides, vitamins and aromatic components, which can be used in the food industries as food supplements and/or food additives, among other applications.In this work, two different agricultural by-products were used as raw materials. The possibilities of employing supercritical carbon dioxide for the fractionation of mandarin peel oil and the extraction and fractionation of rice bran oil were investigated under different process conditions.