Abstract:

This paper reports a systematic investigation of the supercritical carbon dioxide extraction of essential oil from
tea flower. Extraction pressure, temperature, static extraction time, dynamic extraction time and separation temperature were
chosen as main variables influencing extraction efficiency. The multifactor and multilevel visual design method (m2VD)
was applied to design the experiments and the experimental data were analyzed by the multifactor and multilevel visual
optimization method (m2VO) to optimize the extraction conditions. Over 8 g of the essential oil was obtained when three
parallel experiments were conducted under the following conditions: extraction pressure 19–22 MPa, extraction temperature
50–60 ℃,static extraction time 30–50 min, dynamic extraction time 80–100 min and separation temperature 40–50 ℃. The
present study indicates that the m2VO method holds promise for practical application.

Key words: supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, tea flower, multifactor and multilevel visual optimization