“This was a storage room,” Kari Kramp says with a sweep of her arm. “Now it’s a state-of-the-art lab.” The room in question contains a bewildering collection of stainless steel tanks, connecting pipes, and valves. The initiated, however, will recognize a supercritical CO2 extractor.

Extraction is a process used in the manufacture of a wide range of products from medicines to fragrances. It generally involves dissolving a raw material in a liquid in order to separate and harvest a particular substance or essence. A coffee maker is a simple extraction device that uses hot water as a solvent to release flavour compounds.

More complex extraction processes, however, often use carbon-based organic solvents like ethanol and hexane. They’re effective, but they can leave harmful residues in the extracted materials, and their handling can pose environmental risks.

Enter the supercritical CO2 extractor. “Carbon dioxide is non-toxic,” Professor Kramp explains, “and it doesn’t leave a residue, so you get a pure, clean extract.” The device works by pushing pressurized CO2 through raw plant material. Pressurization puts the gas into a “supercritical state”—a condition in which it takes on some of the properties of a liquid, enabling it to function as a solvent.

The technology is versatile as well as environmentally friendly. “With traditional methods,” says Professor Kramp, “you would need to use several different solvents to take out different compounds from plants. But with CO2, you can change the solvent properties just by changing the temperature and pressure. This way you can selectively target and remove groups of compounds. It’s much more efficient.”

Supercritical extraction has been used for some time to make de-caffeinated coffee, but Loyalist researchers are working with several private partners to take the technology in new directions. Bioniche, a Belleville manufacturer of plant-based pharmaceuticals, is using the facility to explore the extraction of a promising anti-viral compound from a plant that grows locally. Another research project involves the extraction of a heart-healthy fatty acid supplement from Labrador shrimp.

The Ontario Innovation Trust helped fund the purchase of two extractors for the new Loyalist lab—a small unit and a mid-sized one. The two extractors enable Kramp and her colleagues to conduct experiments on small samples, then scale up to larger quantities as part of investigating the commercial viability of producing a particular extract.

“The CO2 process is going to make a real improvement in the quality of products that are on the shelf,” says Professor Kramp. But she also believes the research at Loyalist will produce another more far-reaching benefit. “We’re exposing students to working in the field of applied research. We’re building young scientists and innovators for the future.”