Abstract
Recent studies reported that mango (Mangifera indica L.) leaves are an important source of phytochemicals, which have beneficial effects on human health. However, the traditional methods to obtain extracts have the main disadvantage of using toxic solvents (e.g. methanol and acetone). Thus, there is a great interest in developing new processes based on the use of green solvents such as supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), a technology with the potential to obtain high quality yields, which increases the product added value. In this paper, supercritical CO2 extraction of mango leaves was investigated at temperatures of 313-333 K and pressures 15-25 MPa. The yield of the extract obtained was 1,20% at optimal conditions. Regarding the kinetics of supercritical fluid extraction, the Sovová’s model was selected and sucessfully applied to the description of the extraction curves. The adjustable parameters of the model were determined using a local and a global optimization algorithm: Simplex and Simulated Annealing, respectively. As expected, the lowest deviation between experimental and correlated data was obtained by the global optimization technique.
