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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
eCO2Dye, in conjunction with Applied Separations, Dingo Ltd, and Halide Group Inc, has 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.
Our Process for dyeing polyester offers the following advantages versus conventional dyeing in water
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.
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!
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.
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.
Esters of fatty acids and alcohols are used in the food, beverage, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries as flavor and fragrance compounds. Applied Separations has recently synthesized fatty acid esters using an immobilized lipase in a carbon dioxide medium without the use of toxic organic solvents. Various esters have been synthesized using the “green” supercritical process including citronellol laurate, isoamyl acetate, and octyl oleate.
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.
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.
Rosehip Oil Rosehip oil is a valuable natural product for the cosmetic industry, yet conventional methods of extraction are often time consuming and rely heavily on the use of chemical solvents. Traditionally, the determination of oil in rosehip seeds is accomplished by soxhlet extraction. Since rosehip seeds contain a relatively low percentage of oil compared to other seeds this extraction method is labor intensive and requires a significant quantity of organic solvent, such as hexane.
SCF is an alternative technique using supercritical carbon dioxide to extract rosehip seed oil quickly and naturally in the laboratory. It eliminates the use, exposure to, and disposal of hazardous solvents, while providing comparable extraction results in less time.
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
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
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.
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.
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. 
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.
Supercritical Fluids are environmentally friendly and cost effective, but they can’t possibly work for extracting essential oils, can they?
Posts
