LAUSR

ABSTRACT Six organic solvents (methanol, ethanol, acetone, ethyl acetate, n-hexane and petroleum ether) were evaluated for their adiabatic compression heating (ACH) characteristics. A specially designed data acquisition system was used to gather ACH data under different high pressure treatment conditions: pressure, 0.1–400 MPa and initial temperature, 5°C and 25°C. Petroleum ether had the highest temperature increase (44°C) followed by n-hexane, ethyl acetate, acetone, methanol and ethanol (33°C) under the experiment conditions. The ACH values for the solvents exhibited a decreasing trend with an increase in pressure and only slightly affected by the initial temperature. An empirical equation was obtained for predicting the ACH of the solvents as a function of pressure at 5°C and 25°C which gave a good fit ( > 0.99) with experimental data. Thermal effect due to ACH of solvents during the high pressure processing is crucial but neglected most often when studying high pressure extraction.