OPTIMIZATION OF SUPERCRITICAL FLUID EXTRACTION OF VOLATILE CONSTITUENTS FROM A MODEL-PLANT MATRIX

Alpha-Cellulose has been used as a model plant matrix to investigate the conditions required to optimize the supercritical fluid extraction of typical plant constituents, limonene, caryophyllene, carvone, eugenol and santonin, using carbon dioxide as the extraction medium. The conditions required for the successful recovery of the analytes were monitored by gas-liquid chromatography. Timed recovery studies enabled differences in the rates of extraction to be determined to ensure that sufficiently long extraction runs were used. Subcritical and supercritical extractions over the ranges - 10 to 80-degrees-C and 50-250 bar were examined and 250 bar and 40-degrees-C were chosen as the optimum conditions. The effects of the addition of modifiers to the supercritical fluid were also examined. The work also demonstrated that increased selectivity for polar analytes such as lactones could be obtained by trapping the extract on a silica column coupled with selective elution.