Desorption of Food Related Phenolic Acids from Charcoal in Single Solute Model System

Phenolic acids are regarded as harmful materials in food and environment science but recently, as useful materials, and thus adsorption is recommended as an effective separation technique to recover or remove phenolic acids from diluted solution. If the adsorbed phenolic compounds were useful materials, the materials should be recovered through desorption. Desorption using supercritical carbon dioxide(SC-$CO_2$) was tried to separate food-borne phenolic acids from charcoal in single solute system. In the comparisons of desorption amounts, gallic acid had the lowest lolubiligy to SC-$CO_2$. Gallic acid has more hydroxy functional groups than the other phenolic acids, which was immiscible with nonpolar SC-$CO_2$. Ferulic acid was yielded more than p-coumaric acid, because ferulic acid had much bigger molecular weight, which was affected more by van der Waas force. It was found that the most affecting factor on desorption amounts was the solubility of phenolic acids to SC-$CO_2$. The second affecting factor was van der Waals force. Response surface methodology(RSM) was conducted to read the trend of desorption. Increasing density of SC-$CO_2$ raised solubility of phenolic acids.