Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Transformation of coexisting gaseous and liquid into supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) by heating (for better discrimination of the phase barrier a colored metal complex was added)
Compressed and especially supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) is an established solvent for analytical chromatography and technical extractions. The extraction of caffeine from green coffee beans was developed at this institute by Dr. Kurt Zosel in the 1960s and is now used worldwide to produce more than 100,000 tons of decaffeinated coffee per year. Supercritical carbon dioxide is attracting increasing interest as an alternative solvent for environmentally friendly synthetic chemistry. Current research with carbon dioxide at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung is mainly concerned with the application of scCO2 as a solvent in catalytic reactions.