Supercritical CO2 extraction of terpenoids from Cascade hops

啤酒花是多年生植物，其球果已被用于啤酒酿造。这些啤酒花含有精油，主要是萜类化合物。精油的常见提取方法是用庚烷溶剂提取或蒸汽蒸馏，但这两种方法都会影响最终产品的质量。此外，所获得的提取物中的蛇麻烯和月桂烯的量和纯度仍然是一个挑战。此外，对香紫苏烯和法呢烯的提取知之甚少。本项目的主要目的是利用环境友好的“绿色”技术--超临界CO2萃取技术，从Aratinga公司提供的Cascade啤酒花中提取蛇麻烯、香芹烯、月桂烯和法呢烯。使用二氧化碳作为溶剂的超临界萃取允许容易地将溶剂与萃取的蛇麻烯、香芹烯、月桂烯和法呢烯分离，留下易于表征的产物。超临界萃取的结果在产量和产品质量方面将与传统的溶剂萃取进行比较。高产量的纯蛇麻烯、香紫苏烯、月桂烯和法呢烯将使它们作为加拿大生产的啤酒工业的原料进一步商业化，并将加强加拿大的农业和加工部门。

Hops Humulus lupulus are perennial plants, which cones have been used for beer making. These hops have essential oils, mainly terpenoids. Common extraction methods of essential oils are solvent extraction with heptane or steam distillation but both methods affect the quality of the final product. Also, the amount and purity of humulene, and myrcene in the extracts obtained are still a challenge. Furthermore, little is known on the extraction of caryophyllene, and farnesene. The main objective of this project is to use supercritical CO2 extraction, an environmentally-friendly "green" technology, to extract humulene, caryophyllene, myrcene and farnesene from Cascade hops provided by Aratinga Inc. Supercritical extraction using carbon dioxide as the solvent allows easy separation of the solvent from the extracted humulene, caryophyllene, myrcene and farnesene, leaving a product that is easy to characterize. Results from supercritical extraction in terms of yield and product quality will be compared to conventional solvent extraction. A high yield of pure humulene, caryophyllene, myrcene and farnesene will allow their further commercialization as ingredients to the brewery industry produced in Canada and will strengthen Canada's agricultural and processing sectors.