The desterpenation of the orange essential oil is a concern of the citric industry. The process consists of concentrating the oxygenated components of the oil which are the substances responsible for the oil flavor and aroma, by reducing the terpenic fraction that easily degrades promoting the formation of compounds with undesirable flavors and aroma. This fraction rich in oxygenated substances can be used as an additive in the food industry. One of the methods for concentration of oxygenated compounds is the adsorption of the oil in silica gel, followed by desorption with pressurized carbon dioxide. This process allows to obtain a product more concentrated on oxygenated compounds than conventional methods. In this work the diffusion model in solid applied to a fixed-bed was used, with the analytic solution proposed by Rosen in 1952, to model the process of desorption of orange essential oil from a silica gel bed with supercritical carbon dioxide.
Deterpenation; orange essential oil; supercritical extraction; diffusion in solid
