Abstract

A REVIEW: SUPERCRITICAL FLUID AND APPLICATIONS

Sindhutai S. Shedbale* and Dr. Sachin A. Nitave

Abstract

Using high pressure as a processing tool can overcome the legal limitations for solvent residues and restrictions on the use of conventional solvents in chemical processes. Additionally, particulate products can also be achieved by means of supercritical fluid (SCF) processing. This contribution will give a limited overview of applications of subcritical fluid and SCF and will present the energy savings compared with conventional production methods. Supercritical fluids are finding increasing application in the pharma industry for the solution of difficult processing problems. Supercritical fluids exhibit a pressure-tunable dissolving power, they possess a liquid like density (and thus a high solvent strength), and their gas like transport properties allow facile extraction from dense botanical materials to be achieved. This unique combination of properties is ideally suited for developing processes for extracting, purifying, and recrystallizing fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals and producing new product forms that cannot be obtained by industry's more traditional processing technologies.

Keywords: Supercritical fluid, Phase diagram, Applications.