Supercritical CO₂ – A Green Solvent for the Pharmaceutical & Food Industries

The need for new and clean technologies for processing ultra-pure pharmaceutical and food products has led to a rapid rise in the use of supercritical CO₂. This allows you to refine compounds without either leaving toxic residues behind or risking thermal degradation of the products.  Traditional solvents carry with them high costs plus significant health, environment and safety hazards.

The vapour permeability of both the processes’ materials and the materials being refined, become increasingly important and Versaperm has developed an instrument to measure this both quickly and accurately.

The favourable transport properties of supercritical CO₂ allows deeper penetration into a compound’s matrix and more efficient and faster extraction than with conventional organic solvents.  Additionally, modern powder generation processes often involve crystallisation with supercritical fluids.

Versaperm’s equipment is fast, accurate in the parts per million to billion ranges and simple to use. Because supercritical CO₂ can flow through many solid barriers in a way that can be very sensitive to small temperature and pressure variations, it can also allow users to control these factors very precisely.

The equipment can measure several samples at the same time and provides a simple to use automated control panel with a large touch-screen interface.  It needs very little re-calibration and requires, at most, minimal training. 

Supercritical CO₂ can be used for everything from the processing of coffee and vegetable oil through to Insulin and anti-asthma drugs. It can even be used to produce Biocrude, a next-generation non-fossil fuel.

As well as designing, manufacturing and supplying the equipment to laboratories, including standards laboratories around the world, Versaperm also offers laboratory testing service and consultancy services.  

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