Extraction of Essential Oils from Mentha Spicata L. (Labiatae) via Optimized Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Process

Publication date: Available online 11 February 2017 Source:The Journal of Supercritical Fluids Author(s): M. Shahsavarpour, M. Lashkarbolooki, Mohammad Javad Eftekhari, F. Esmaeilzadeh Spearmint oil known as aromatic volatile compound of plants are widely used in food industries. In the present study, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) extraction is used to extract the essential oil from spearmint leaves. In this way, a series of extraction experiments are designed to investigate the effect of different operating conditions such as extraction pressure (85–120bar), extraction temperature (38–50°C), CO2 flow rate (0.059–0.354g/min), mean particle size (0.177–2mm) and dynamic extraction time (20–120min) on efficiency of the extracted essential oils. In the last step, not only a second order polynomial equation is developed to obtain the optimal SC-CO2 extraction parameters, but also the composition of extracted essential oil at optimum operating condition is analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Graphical abstract
Source: The Journal of Supercritical Fluids - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research