Supercritical 101

Industry Overview

Extraction methods vary greatly and are used for many different products in a number of industries. For example, most of the oils we use today for cooking, cleaning, medicinal, cosmetic, and scientific purposes are extracted from their host in a variety of ways. Currently, the most popular methods include both hexane and mechanical extraction.

Hexane extraction is the method of choice due to its ready availability, cheap cost, and somewhat efficient extraction capabilities. Today’s abundance of hexane is due to the fact that it is produced at every petroleum refinery in the world, as a high-pressure, highly flammable component of gasoline that is removed during the refining process. Hexane has been named a HAP (Hazardous Air Pollutant) by the EPA and is highly toxic, flammable, and carcinogenic. Many studies have addressed concerns with the use of hexane because it is inevitable that small, but dangerous, amounts will be released into the environment from numerous operating facilities and that residual amounts of the chemical will also contaminate the products extracted with it, particularly human and animal food products. Studies have shown that even with recent plant improvements, a typical facility may still release as much as 6,000 lbs. of hexane per day into the environment and that larger traces of the chemical may be present in human foods than previously thought. Additionally, the volatility of hexane creates very dangerous working environments, and it is not uncommon for one or two extraction facilities to “blow up” annually around the world. There has been a long history of work related accidents and deaths caused by the constant redistillation of this hazardous material. Although hexane is abundant and affordable, it still comes at a major price.

Mechanical solvent extraction methods have become more popular in recent years due to the demand for healthier cooking oils and safer, more environmentally friendly extraction methods. 

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What Is Supercritical Extraction?

Supercritical fluids are compounds that, when placed under certain pressures and temperatures, take on properties of a liquid and a gas – and become very powerful solvents. Supercritical fluids, such as CO₂, typically have the benefit of being cheap, available, and benign in their natural state.  For these reasons, supercritical fluid extractions and similar processes have many inherent advantages over traditional methods that use hexane or other petro-chemicals.  They increase operating efficiency, reduce energy consumption, provide safe working conditions, benefit the environment, and produce non-degraded, natural, high-quality products.

MOR Technology has several existing applications for our proprietary, state-of-the-art Supercritical Extraction process. Its primary function will be naturally extracting high-quality corn oil from corn germ, a small “seed” contained within the corn kernel. Large amounts of germ are currently being produced in the corn dry milling and ethanol industries due to the increased demand for fractionation processes. MOR Technology’s revolutionary MOR-Frac™ Corn Milling System, designed specifically for the ethanol industry, forms an ideal partnership with our C0₂ extraction methods by providing large streams of high-quality, nearly perfectly separated germ that is ready for oil extraction. Our small, scalable extraction facilities can be installed virtually anywhere and will efficiently produce premium grade corn oil, which is high in demand and highly profitable in today’s marketplace.

Other applications of MOR’s Supercritical CO₂ Extraction process include:

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Industry Comparison

Advantages & Benefits

Coming soon...

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