Techniques of enhancing supercritical fluid extraction and their applications

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) is a new subject separation techniques and develops rapidly in recent years because of its advantage over conventional extraction methods. However, there are still souse problems unsolved with it, such as high operation pressure, long extraction time, relatively low extraction yield etc., so that it can not be used widely at factory-scale. Since modifier, ultrasonic filed, electrical field etc. can enhance SFE process and be used to solve the problems mentioned above, they become a new orientation of research on SFE. In this article, these enhancing techniques and their application are presented, and the existing problems and research orientation are also pointed out.