SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES EN THE SUPERCRITICAL CO2 EXTRATION OF RAPESEED DEODORIZER DISTILLATE

Abstract

Polyphenols have shown interesting antioxidant properties and other healthy benefits. In this contribution the process to recover and concentrate polyphenols from deodorizer distillate of rapeseed oil was studied. The main objective of this work was developed experimental studies in order to get information of the fluid phase equilibria and the operation of a column for a counter-current extraction with supercritical CO2 solvent of polyphenols. The data obtained was modeled with a cubic equation of state, and used to simulate the process. From of the three different alternatives of multicomponent mixtures to feed the column, deodistillate from rapeseed oil of refining process, FAME from short path distillation and a solution in MeOH/H2O from solvent extraction, in this study the first feed was tested in the counter-current column extraction with supercritical CO2. The experimental data measured has let to select the best feed of column extraction in order to have the higher concentration of polyphenols. The results indicated that the mixture MeOH/H2O from solvent extraction is a promising feed due that it has physical properties that can be increase the recovery of the polyphenol of interest, dimer of vinylsyringol. The experimental data were regressed using the Aspen simulator and in parallel were estimated the required physical properties of dimer of vinylsyringol. Binary interaction parameters were fitted for the Redlich-Kwong-Aspen equation of state. These parameters were used to the process simulation. With the data collected and adjusted the simulation of the extraction process indicated that it was possible to represent the behavior of the liquid phase (refine) phase in terms its composition.