Application of supercritical carbon dioxide for the processing of renewable resources

The supply of fossil resources (oil, natural gas and coal) is limited to the next two or three generations. In order to find alternatives for the production of energy, materials and chemicals (commodity, drugs, food supplements) an efficient usage of renewable primary products is of increasing importance. These different products should not be treated exclusively. Instead, renewable resources should yield different products in cascade processes. An integration of the different processes is desirable. Supercritical fluid processing marks an interesting possibility for process integration. Supercritical fluids can be used for cell disruption or the pretreatment of polymers, for extraction and purifi-cation and as a reaction media for chemical and enzymatic reactions. Our work focuses on the formulation of micro- and nanoparticles from biogenic raw materials. Processes for the production of particles by the means of supercritical fluids are called supercritical fluid nucleation (SFN) processes. In order to investigate these processes two devices are used: A universal laboratory apparatus for experiments in lab-scale (mg-scale) is constructed at the institute. A medium size apparatus for small scale production (g-scale) is available. It yields more reliable information on the actual production processes.