Pharmaceutical applications of supercritical carbon dioxide

The appearance of a supercritical state was already observed at the beginning of the 19th century. Nevertheless, the industrial extraction of plant and other natural materials started about twenty years ago with the decaffeination of coffee. Today carbon dioxide is the most common gas for supercritical fluid extraction in food and pharmaceutical industry. Since pure supercritical carbon dioxide is a lipophilic solvent, mixtures with organic solvents, especially alcohols, are used to increase the polarity of the extraction fluid; more polar compounds can be extracted in this way. The main fields of interest are the extraction of vegetable oils from plant material in analytical and preparative scale, the preparation of essential oils for food and cosmetic industry and the isolation of substances of pharmaceutical relevance. Progress in research was made by the precise measurement of phase equilibria data by means of different methods. Apart from extraction, supercritical fluid chromatography was introduced in the field of analytics, as well as micro- and nanoparticle formation using supercritical fluids as solvent or antisolvent. This review presents pharmaceutical relevant literature of the last twenty years with special emphasis on extraction of natural materials.