Pigments and their solubility in and extractability by supercritical CO2 -: I:: The case of curcumin

A specially designed high-pressure cell was used simultaneously as extractor/autoclave and photometric cell in a Perkin Elmer Lambda 5 spectrophotometer. Based on this cell, a simple method was developed to determine the extractability of pigments by pure and by modified supercritical (sc) CO2. The method is demonstrated with curcumin from turmeric. With sc CO2 modified by 10% ethanol, the extraction yield fur curcumin from two commercial finely ground dry turmeric samples was about 100%, measured by reference to the (complete) extraction of samples of the same charge with pure ethanol under standard conditions. Extractable curcumin content was from 1.8 to 2.5%, with three samples of turmeric of different origins.