Study of Co-Solvent Effects on Stickies Removal in Supercritical Fluid Extraction

Using supercritical carbon dioxide to remove stickies in recycling fibers is studied at laboratory scale. Supercritical carbon dioxide is the most environmental friendly supercritical fluid widely used in extraction process. This study includes co-solvent effect on sticky compounds removal by using supercritical carbon dioxide extraction. The sticky compounds are dispensed onto fibers, and then extracted using supercritical carbon dioxide and co-solvent in order to study the efficiency of stickies removal. The results show that supercritical carbon dioxide can remove most sticky compounds such as paraffin wax, polyethylene wax, polyvinyl acetate, polystyrene butadiene. It is demonstrated that with co-solvent, the extraction efficiency increases considerably under the same extraction conditions.