Supercritical Drying/Solvent Removal
Supercritical drying is commonly used for processing aerogels. Supercritical CO2 can also be used to replace alcohol as the drying medium for wet gels. The absence of surface tension with supercritical fluids allows the gels to be dried with very little shrinkage, resulting in a superior gel matrix that remains nearly intact. As a result, the aerogels formed by supercritical drying have higher surface areas, lower densities, larger pore sizes and greater pore volumes.
Residual solvent removal is a key step in pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturing processes. The traditional methods of solvent removal are very energy intensive. Thar Process’s supercritical fluid technology has been successfully applied to remove residual solvent from tablets as well as from enriched phospholipids fractions much more efficiently.