Replace Hexane in Your Essential Oil Extractions

Hexane is a commonly used solvent in natural products and essential oil extractions. But Hexane has been categorized as a hazardous air pollutant by the US EPA, and is included on their list of toxic chemicals. Despite best efforts, facilities using hexane may leak up to 6,000 pounds of hexane a day into the atmosphere. In addition, extracts will contain undesirable hexane residue.

The solution: Supercritical Fluid extractions.

• No hazardous waste
• No chemical residue
• No health hazard
• Environmentally friendly

Click here for information about supercritical fluids.

Click here for information about extracting essential oils with supercritical fluids.

Essential Oil Extracts with No Solvent Residue or Health Hazard

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide extracts essential oils more efficiently than petroleum based solvents. More importantly, upon returning to an ambient state, the CO₂ becomes a gas, leaving no residue. Flavors and fragrances are left in their unadulterated states. Essential oils extracted with supercritical fluids leave no solvent taste or smell.

Sometimes supercritical CO₂ is used in conjunction with more traditional methods such as soaking perfume feedstocks in an organic solvent for a period of time. The organic solvents containing the extracted the perfumes (essential oils) and accompanying waxes are then decanted and evaporated, leaving a concrete. The essential oils can easily be separated from the wax with supercritical CO₂. Because of the low temperature, the process gives high recoveries.

View the video and visit the Applied Separations website for more information.

Can I use Supercritical Fluid to process MY Essential Oil?

Can I use Supercritical Fluid to process MY Essential Oil?

Short answer: Yes!

Supercritical fluid is a “tunable” solvent, meaning...
Manipulate the pressure and change the density. Change the density, and you change the solvating power.

Change the solubility characteristics of supercritical CO₂ to suit your needs.
Sunflower seeds? Yes.
Lavender? Yes.
Vanilla? Yes.
Coffee beans? Yes.
Cinnamon? Yes.
Ginger? Yes.
Jasmine? Yes.
Kava Kava? Yes.
Patchouli? Yes.
Rose Hip Seeds? Yes.
St. John’s Wort? Yes. …and the list goes on and on.


Visit the Applied Separations website to find out how.

Supercritical Fluid or Steam Distillation for Essential Oils

Supercritical Fluids are environmentally friendly and cost effective, but they can’t possibly work for extracting essential oils, can they?

YES.

Supercritical fluid is an excellent, non-toxic way to replace hexane in your essential oil extraction process. Supercritical fluid can be used at a lower temperature than steam distillation (95 to 100 degrees F vs 140 to 212 degrees F for steam distillation) – perfume extracts will keep their top notes!

Visit the Applied Separations website to find out how you can use supercritical fluid to produce a higher quality extract for less.

What is a Supercritical Fluid, Anyway?

We learned in elementary school about water, gas, liquid, and plasma states, but there is another – Supercritical!

Carbon dioxide is in its supercritical fluid state when both the temperature and pressure equal or exceed the critical point of 31°C and 73 atm (see diagram). In its supercritical state, CO₂ has both gas-like and liquid-like qualities, and it is this dual characteristic of supercritical fluids that provides the ideal conditions for extracting compounds with a high degree of recovery in a short period of time.

By controlling or regulating pressure and temperature, the density, or solvent strength, of supercritical fluids can be altered to simulate organic solvents ranging from chloroform to methylene chloride to hexane. This dissolving power can be applied to purify, extract, fractionate, infuse, and recrystallize a wide array of materials.

Because CO₂ is non-polar, a polar organic co-solvent (or modifier) can be added to the supercritical fluid for processing polar compounds. By controlling the level of pressure/temperature/modifier, supercritical CO₂ can dissolve a broad range of compounds, both polar and non-polar.

To see some of the uses for supercritical fluids, visit the Applied Separations website, and view the presentation on our YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G4zZ3hNr2U

Create Non-Toxic, Therapeutic / Food Grade Essential Oils Easily and Cost Effectively

The use of essential oils has become "essential" for modern living. Essential oils can be primary ingredients in perfumes for cosmetics or soaps and detergents. They form the basis of the spices in our foods. Essential oils are the base for aromatherapy.

What if there was a way to extract essential oils quickly and efficiently, without compromising the quality of the extract? There is. Supercritical carbon dioxide.

With supercritical fluids:

• No Solvent residue. No health hazard. Maintains a "natural" state. 
• Mild Extraction Conditions – 31°C temperature 
• Fractionation - easy using only CO₂ - CO₂ is a "tunable solvent" – easily change your temperature/pressure to suit your material 

Concrete/Oleoresin created with
Supercritical Fluid Extraction

Supercritical CO₂ can also be used in conjunction with more traditional methods such as soaking perfume feedstocks in an organic solvent for a period of time. The organic solvents containing the extracted the perfumes (essential oils) and accompanying waxes is then decanted and evaporated, leaving a concrete. The essential oils can easily be separated from the wax with supercritical CO₂. Because of the low temperature, the process gives high recoveries.

Click here to see an example of a supercritical system for the extraction of essential oils.

Visit Applied Separations for more information.

Water-Free Textile Dyeing

In the USA, the textile dyeing industry has invested more than one billion dollars in the past decade on environmental technologies designed to ensure that by-products of textile manufacturing do not pollute the environment. 

This investment is paralleled in other parts of the world, notably Taiwan and Korea. Initially, this effort focused on reducing the large quantities of water needed in current processes, for even the most economical use of water requires 100L/kg material. 

Supercritical carbon dioxide is an alternative dyeing technology that eliminates the use of water while achieving results comparable to current dyeing processes. Supercritical CO₂ is harmless ecologically, available, non-toxic and non-explosive.

For more information about this environmentally friendly method of dyeing, view the Applied Separations Application Note on Textile Dyeing.