Food & Beverage

 SOL technologies and plant for extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide have many applications in food industry production of aromas and complex molecules from various substrates, as an alternative to conventional extraction processes using organic solvents, hydrocarbons or chlorofluorohydrocarbons.

Carbon dioxide in its supercritical state, that is with temperatures and pressure above the critical point (critical P 73 bar; critical T 31°C), maintains the specifications and well-known characteristics of an alimentary gas and also demonstrates high solvent characteristics, making it possible to use it for example to extract caffeine, carotene or propolis from natural raw materials. The procedures, which are intrinsically environment friendly thanks to optimised recycling of the carbon dioxide used, which is easy to separate in gas form once the extraction is finished and re-compressed to operating conditions using specific SOL equipment, guarantee the absence of potentially harmful residues in food products and reduce production costs.