Supercritical CO2 extraction of essential oil from Kabosu (Citrus sphaerocarpa Tanaka) peel

Abstract

Citrus sphaerocarpa Hort. ex Tanaka is one of many popular sour citruses in Japan. Its juice processing peel residues contain a lot of useful compounds including essential oil. Our interests mainly focused on the extraction of this essential oil using supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2), an environmentally benign and generally regarded as safe solvent that has many advantages such as low critical temperature, low viscosity, and easy separation from the extract. In this research, essential oil was extracted from Citrus sphaerocarpa Tanaka peel using SC-CO2 at extraction temperatures of 313 to 353 K and pressures of 10 to 30 MPa.