Trends on the Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solutions Process Applied to Food and Non-food Industries.

Abstract

Background: The supercritical fluids applied to particle engineering over the last years have received growing interest from the food and non-food industries, in terms of processing, packaging, and preservation of several products. The rapid expansion of supercritical solutions (RESS) process has been recently reported as an efficient technique for the production of free-solvent particles with controlled morphology and size distribution.

Objective: In this review, we report technological aspects of the application of the RESS process applied to the food and non-food industry, considering recent data and patent survey registered in literature.

Methods: The effect of process parameters cosolvent addition, temperature, pressure, nozzle size among others, during RESS on the size, structure and morphology of the resulted particles, and the main differences about recent patented RESS processes are reviewed.

Results: Most of the experimental works intend to optimize their processes through investigation of process parameters.

Conclusion: RESS is a feasible alternative for the production of particles with a high yield of bioactive constituents of interest to the food industry. On the other hand, patents developed using this type of process for food products are very scarce, less attention being given to the potential of this technique to develop particles from plant extracts with bioactive substances.