What are the benefits of pumping CO2 in a liquid phase rather than a gas phase?
The key parameter you desire to optimize for the extraction of natural products is throughput. Therefore, our family of Supercritical CO2 processing platforms from the CannabisSFE up to the NPX SFE units process with liquid CO2. Liquid CO2 at any given pressure and temperature of operation has a higher “loading capacity” of extract. Liquid CO2 can hold more extract than gaseous CO2 and therefore provides a more efficient extraction. The most efficient extraction processes offering the highest yields are always liquid CO2. Other systems that use gaseous CO2 claim a higher flow rate, but if you convert a gaseous CO2 flow rate of say 5L/min of gaseous CO2, it is only 12.5 mls/min of liquid CO2, so the systems that claim to have a 5 L/min flowrate of gaseous CO2 do not provide fast processing times of your raw materials.