Experimental design approach for supercritical fluid extraction

Experimental design with multilinear regression has been used to examine the relative contribution of the main experimental variables during supercritical fluid extraction. Six steroidal compounds of various solubilities in supercritical CO2 were considered. The results indicate that the density of the supercritical fluid has the greatest effect on the solubilisation and transfer of steroid from extraction cell to collection device. The minimum number of cell volumes of supercritical CO2 required for effective extraction was experimentally determined.