The ONLY Teaching Tool for Supercritical Fluids Technology

Applied Separations is meeting the growing, world-wide commitment to a cleaner, greener environment. Environmentally friendly Supercritical Fluid (SCF) technology works with today's innovative, easy-to-use systems from Applied Separations. 

Your students will be leading tomorrow's green process using no petroleum solvents and no toxic residue. 

Click here to find out how you can win a Spe-ed SFE-Prime system for your college classroom and lab.

Waterless Systems for Textile Dyeing

Bench-top System with Color Matching

Applied Separations and eCO₂Dye have developed a waterless textile dyeing process and equipment for dyeing. The process uses carbon dioxide as the solvent for dyeing as opposed to water as the medium in conventional dyeing.

In addition to the supercritical fluid systems for waterless textile dyeing, the Applied Separations / eCO₂Dye team has also developed additional technology to support your dyeing operations:

• 60 - 90 minute dyeing cycle depending on color
• Selection of disperse dyes that work well in our process. Create a palette of colors with these dyes.
• Color database for your use
• Use color match capability
• Dyed polyester meets AATCC tests

Visit the textile dyeing section of the Applied Separations site, and the eCO₂Dye site for more information.

Dye Textiles Without Water? How is that possible?

Water, water, everywhere, but not enough to drink, as the saying goes... or to use for the myriad of other things. The world is running out of water faster than people would like to admit, and industry is a large part of the problem. 

But imagine if one could eliminate water from an industrial process like, say, dyeing textiles, and still maintain the color standards that the fashion industry demands! Today, that can be done. It's possible now to use supercritical CO₂ to dye textiles without water. 

Click here to find out more!

Pre-Process Textiles for Dyeing with Supercritical Fluids

scCO₂ for Scouring : Cleaning of yarns and fabrics done prior to dyeing or printing

Production of yarns and converting these into fabrics by weaving or knitting processes requires use of various oils, waxes, lubricants and other additives to facilitate in the fabrication steps.  The processing aids are removed from the textile to obtain high quality dyeing or printing on the textile. Processing aids are used for all textile materials – natural and man-made, though they may differ chemically depending on the material.

To learn more about using supercritical fluids to process textiles, visit the eCO2Dye site.

Meet the Fashion industry’s Color Matching Demands with CO2

eCO₂Dye, in conjunction with Applied Separations, has developed a color database which may be used in the Datacolor ColorMatch Software used with their line of Supercritical CO₂ systems for waterless textile dyeing.

Now you can use our color match capability on yarn, thread, fabric, and garments while using CO₂ to dye your fiber without water.

The eCO₂Dye system obtains excellent color matching with as many as 4 dyes, allowing users to meet the strict demands of the fashion industry.

Visit www.eco2dye.com for more information.

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.

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.

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.

What Does Supercritical Fluid Look Like?

It's not a gas... it's not a liquid... so what does supercritical fluid look like, anyway? 

Applied Separations vessels are available with 5-port lids that allow for the addition of a fiber optic probe to view the inside of the vessel during your process. 

View the video and see!

Free SCF-Prime for the Chemistry Classroom Lab

The Applied Separations Educational Grant is back!
Together with ACS GCI, Applied Separations is proud to offer an award, SCF-PRIME-12, which will allow the selected college or university to offer instruction on Supercritical Fluids. The winner will be awarded a Spe-ed SFE Prime Package, which includes a Supercritical Fluid System and vessel designed specifically for the higher education market as well as supporting Classroom Materials, such as a syllabus, handouts, suggested applications and more. The total value of this package exceeds $20,000.

Visit the Applied Separations website for more information.

Applied Separations and the "12 Principles of Green Chemistry" Week 1: Prevention

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published their “12 Principles of Green Chemistry” originally published by Paul Anastas and John Warner in Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press: New York, 1998) http://www.epa.gov/gcc/pubs/principles.html

Applied Separations’ supercritical fluid extraction systems fall in line with these 12 principles. In the coming weeks, we will be briefly addressing each of these points.

Green Chemistry Principle
Prevention

EPA	Applied Separations
It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been created.	Applied Separations SCF systems prevent waste by using supercritical CO2. The use of supercritical CO2 greatly reduces (if not eliminates) the use of hazardous chemicals. If fewer chemicals are used, there are less hazardous waste disposal concerns.

For more information, view the What is Supercritical Fluid? presentation on the Applied Separations website.

http://appliedseparations.com/ASInteractive/Overviews/SCF/What_is_SFE/player.html

Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference

Learn how to Green your process. Learn how you can teach Green Chemistry in your university lab. Visit Applied Separations at the 14th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.

For more information on how Applied Separations can help you green your process, visit the supercritical fluids section of the Applied Separations website.

http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/

Clean Extraction of Essential Oils – Flavors and Fragrances

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. Using supercritical fluids to extract the essential oils is more efficient and leaves no solvent residue!

Find out how to extract essential oils and keep them in their natural state.

http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/SCF_Uses/SCF_for_Essential_Oils-Flavors_and_Fragrances.asp

Environmentally Friendly Textile Dyeing

The conventional dyeing of textiles requires that an excess of dye is dissolved or in some way "taken-up" in an aqueous or solvent solution. The dye mix is then pumped into a vat containing holding the textile. Typically there is agitation or the dye is recirculated several times through the cloth. At the end of the cycle, the dye mix is pumped to the waste treatment facility. Dyes are notoriously difficult to treat. The process is decidedly unfriendly to the environment.

The use of supercritical CO₂ in textile dyeing is an environmentally friendly alternative.

Click to find out how!

http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/SCF_Uses/SCF_for_Textile_Dyeing.asp

"Green" Process for the Extraction of Natural Products

The term natural products has become the "catch-all" for any compound that has been produced by a living being, e.g. plant, animal, algae. The extracted compounds are used in, or are themselves, foods, medicinals, pigments, fragrances. The process for many years was to extract from the matrix material by solvents: aqueous and petroleum based. The first large scale use of supercritical fluids in extracting natural products was the decaffeination of coffee in 1979 and since then thousands of compounds have been extracted commercially.

Growing environmental concerns have renewed interest supercritical fluids as the “green” alternative for natural products extractions. Find out how “green” your process.

http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/SCF_Uses/SCF_for_Natural_Products.asp

Environmentally Friendly Debinding in Metal Injection Molding

Metal injection molding, or MIM, is a manufacturing process which combines the versatility of plastic injection molding with the strength and integrity of machined, pressed or otherwise manufactured small, complex, metal parts. The process involves combining fine metal powders with binders which allow the metal to be injected into a mold using standard plastic injection molding machines. The binders must be removed before the part can be used.

Traditional debinding methods are:

• environmentally unfriendly due to high VOC emissions
• may use solvents that are scheduled to be outlawed by the Montréal protocol
• have excessively long debinding times

Using supercritical fluids in the debinding process is faster and economically friendly.

Click here to find out how supercritical fluids can make your process ‘green’ and more efficient.
http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/SCF_Uses/SCF_for_Metal_Injection_Molding.asp

Green Chemistry: Recycle Your Solvents

Everyone is making an effort to be environmentally friendly. We recycle our glass, cans, and newspapers, we take our travel mugs to the coffee shop, and take cloth bags to the grocery store… why not recycle solvents? Wait, recycle solvents?

Instead of using traditional solvents, which are costly and really cannot be recycled, use supercritical carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is one of the most commonly used supercritical fluids. CO₂ is:

• Safe
• Inexpensive
• Readily available
• An ideal substitute for many hazardous and toxic solvents

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.

CO₂ is not produced in the SCF process. Existing CO₂ is used. There is NO addition to the greenhouse effect.

For more information about how you can use green chemistry for your process, visit the Applied Separations website.
http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/

“Green” Alternative to Soxhlet for Fat Determination in Food

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) was used to determine total fat and fat-soluble vitamins in Parmigiano cheese and salami. The results were compared with results obtained by traditional methods (Soxhlet). The quantity collected by SFE was statistically equivalent to the Soxhlet extraction.

For more information about the process or the specific application, contact Applied Separations
or visit the SCF section of the Applied Separations website.

Medical Implant Cleaning Using Supercritical Fluids

Today’s modern medicine allows many of us to have longer, healthier and more productive lives than our ancestors ever could have dreamed. One key part of this advancement is the use of medical implants that are made to replace and act as a missing biological structure within the body. Since the implants are placed inside the body, the cleanliness of the implant must be beyond compare. Contaminants can be introduced into the implant both in the processing of the implant and in the post-production handling.

For more information about cleaning medical implants with supercritical fluids, visit the SCF section of Applied Separations' website.

http://appliedseparations.com/Supercritical/SCF_Uses/SCF_for_Medical_Implant_Cleaning.asp