Citation

Fernández-Ronco MP, Gracia I, De Lucas A, Rodríguez JF. J. Supercrit. Fluids 2011; 57(2): 112-119.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, PRA Press)

DOI

10.1016/j.supflu.2011.02.010

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Oleoresin Capsicum is one of the most important sources of natural colorants with a lot of applications in food industry due to its carotenoids concentration. With high content of lipid matter and a noticeable amount of capsaicinoids, Oleoresin Capsicum can also be used in pharmaceutical industry or for self-defense sprays. In this work, the phase equilibrium of Oleoresin Capsicum in supercritical carbon dioxide was measured by a recirculation method at pressures between 90 and 315bar and temperatures of 314.7, 326.4 and 337.8K. The experimental data were correlated using Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK) equation of state with Mathias-Klotz-Prausnitz as mixing rule, and binary interaction parameters were obtained. Moreover, the prediction of the pseudo-binary system CO₂/Oleoresin Capsicum was carried out with the Group Contribution Equation of State (GC-EoS), using the set of binary group parameters established in a previous work. For all isotherms studied, the solubility of Oleoresin Capsicum in the gaseous phase and that of CO₂ in the liquid phase increases with an increase in pressure. Comparison between experimental data and those correlated by SRK or predicted by GC-EoS, shows that SRK correlation produced better fittings of the experimental data. Nevertheless, the importance of data predicted by GC-EoS is based on the possibility to obtain an approximation to the thermodynamic behaviour of the real systems without the necessity of experimental data.