SUPERCRITICAL FLUID EXTRACTION - NEW DIRECTIONS AND UNDERSTANDINGS

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) has been demonstrated as a technique that has eliminated some of the tedious steps of current liquid-liquid and solid-liquid extraction procedures. SFE also offers cleaner extracts, less sample handling and equivalent or better recoveries to conventional technologies. As a technique, it is cost effective, time efficient and low in solvent waste generation. The areas which need to be addressed to bring SFE into the routine laboratory are precision/reproducibility and multi-sample analysis. Without development in these directions, competition with conventional methodology does not exist. As demonstrated by applications to Agricultural Products, experiments will be presented which show the feasibility of using SFE as a routine analytical tool in sample preparation.