Recent Advances in Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) For Recovery of Plant Bioactive Compounds

In recent decades, green technologies have been used in order to extract bioactive compounds from vegetable matrices, due to their inherent advantages compared with organic solvent-based approaches. Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) is one of these methods, which has been applied for the extraction of several valuable substances from plants. This technique is swift, efficient, environmentally clean, and selective, so, it is a good alternative for conventional methods. Bioactive compounds exhibit various solubility, polarity, and chemical stability, thus, optimal solvents and extraction conditions should be selected based on the targeted compound. In this paper the principles of SFE and different operational parameters which can affect the extraction efficiency have been discussed. Some of the recent studies on the use of SFE for the extraction of plants bioactive substances have also been reviewed