An Overview on Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Herbal Medicines: Process and Methodology

Abstract

The chemistry of natural products has gained improvement in the last years due to rapid progress of new chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) is considered as a promising alternate technology to traditional extraction methods since it has majority of distinct characteristics. Recently, SFE of bioactive components from plants has gained wide applications in different medicinal, industrial and pharmaceutical fields. This article try to cover the fundamental concepts related to SFE like definition, properties, chosen of supercritical fluids (SCF) for extraction, the process, advantages and disadvantages of SFE, employment of SFE in the extraction of herbal medicines and finally the novel applications  of SFE in Chemistry and industry.