Sabinsa Corporation, announced the completion of its new supercritical carbon dioxide extraction facility at Bangalore, India based SAMI Labs, the company’s manufacturing division. According to Dr. Majeed, "this facility will provide additional opportunities for us to serve our customers better." The capacity of the plant is about 2000 kg feed material per day. Supercritical extraction is a two step process which uses a dense gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), as a solvent above its critical temperature (31°C) and critical pressure (74 Bar).
As the extraction takes place at low temperatures in an inert solvent, the color, flavor and biological value of temperature sensitive materials remain unaffected.
Pulverized raw material is loaded into the extractor. Supercritical CO2 is fed to the extractor through a high pressure pump and functions as a solvent The extract-laden CO2 is then sent to a reduced pressure separator, where the extract separates.
A major advantage of supercritical extraction technology is that residual solvents are eliminated from the final product. This is of particular importance for botanical extracts and solvent based products. Of equal importance is the absence of heavy metals, since they are not extractable using this method even if they are present in the starting material. Supercritical extraction also significantly reduces the bio-burden, or microbial load, due to the pressurized use of carbon dioxide.
