Screening design of experiment applied to supercritical antisolvent precipitation of amoxicillin

Some Advances in Supercritical Fluid Extraction for Fuels, Bio-Materials and Purification

Supercritical fluids are used for the extraction of desired ingredients from natural materials, but also for the removal of undesired and harmful ingredients. In this paper, the pertinent physical and chemical properties of supercritical water, methanol, ethanol, carbon dioxide, and their mixtures are provided. The methodologies used with supercritical fluid extraction are briefly dealt with. Advances in the application of supercritical extraction to fuels, the gaining of antioxidants and other useful items from biomass, the removal of undesired ingredients or contaminants, and the preparation of nanosized particles of drugs are described.

Survey of supercritical fluid techniques for producing drug delivery systems for a potential use in cancer therapy

Standard drug delivery systems for cancer treatment usually comprise a device with a specific size and shape (depending on the type of cancer that has to be treated), which is composed by a biodegradable compound with a chemotherapeutic entrapped within it. This device should have a molecule (mainly a protein) bound to its surface to target only cancer cells. On the contrary, supercritical fluids (SCF) have been widely used in the pharmaceutical industry for creating drug delivery systems or for extracting drugs from natural sources. This review explains the potential of SCFs for cancer therapies by studying the current uses of the different high-pressure processes that can be useful for this medical treatment, such as the development of new drug delivery systems (with their drug release) or the extraction of chemotherapeutics from a vegetal matrix.

Screening of factors influencing Cu(II) extraction by soybean oil-based organic solvents using fractional factorial design

This study aimed to identify the significant factors that give large effects on the efficiency of Cu(II) extraction from aqueous solutions by soybean oil-based organic solvents using fractional factorial design. Six factors (mixing time (t), di-2-ethylhexylphosphoric acid concentration ([D2EHPA]), organic to aqueous phase ratio (O:A), sodium sulfate concentration ([Na(2)SO(4)]), equilibrium pH (pH(eq)) and tributylphosphate concentration ([TBP])) affecting the percentage extraction (%E) of Cu(II) were investigated. A 2(6-1) fractional factorial design was applied and the results were analyzed statistically. The results show that only [D2EHPA], pH(eq) and their second-order interaction ([D2EHPA] × pH(eq)) influenced the %E significantly. Regression models for %E were developed and the adequacy of the reduced model was examined. The results of this study indicate that fractional factorial design is a useful tool for screening a large number of variables and reducing the number of experiments.