To Recycle or not to Recycle?

One of the most powerful aspects of CO₂ as a solvent is when you collect your product from your separator it returns to a gas leaving your product uncontaminated.

However, we can also harness its re-use by re-compressing it. In small scale systems it may not make sense as CO₂ is relatively cheap, although this can depend on the grade. However, when we begin to scale up it starts to make more sense. The most common way is to drop the pressure of the CO₂ to 55 bar (bottle pressure) and recycle back into a tank.

However, this can present some challenges as materials can carry over and cause blockages. The material that is carried over can also contaminate the extraction process. By understanding the material and process conditions these effects can be minimised and/or removed.

Please contact us if you are having a problems and an engineer at Core Separations will be in touch.