Equilibrium in Pressurized Systems (Sub and Supercritical)

Abstract

High-pressure food technology has emerged as a promising alternative to produce safe and high quality foods. In addition, the supercritical fluid (SCF) technology allows additive-free and nonthermal novel processing alternatives in the field of reaction, extraction, fractionation, particle technology, and analytics for assessment of food-quality and characterization. In all of these applications, the design of the system phase conditions is of particular importance, because it directly affects the performance of supercritical units and controls the process outputs. Therefore, predictive thermodynamic models able to describe high-pressure phase behavior of natural products or biomass-derived mixtures with SCFs are essential. After discussing factors affecting solid solubility and fluid phase behavior, in this chapter we show the modeling of mixtures in the context of vegetable oil hydrogenation to produce shortenings, supercritical synthesis and purification of triacetin (food additive) and vanillin supercritical extraction with SC-CO2.