Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Anais do 14 SLACA - Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciência de Alimentos

The Amazon region has a very rich biodiversity in native species that arouse great economic and academic interests. Tucumã (Astrocaryum aculeatum) is a popular fruit from that region, usually consumed fresh. It is highly nutritious, being a good source of oil that can be extracted from its pulp and almonds. Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) is a clean technology, unlike most traditional methods, which adds better quality to the products obtained. The objective of this work was to study the kinetics of tucumã almonds in order to find the adequate solvent/feed (S/F) ratio and to evaluate the global yield of extracts. The SFE kinetics was performed at 35 MPa and 40 °C to determine S/F, because is verified that all the easily accessible solute was rapidly extracted by convection. SFE of tucumã almond was performed using supercritical CO2 at diferente pressures (15, 25 and 35 MPa) and temperatures (40, 50 and 60 °C) and the extracts were characterized for their global yield, defined as the mass ratio between extract and sample feed. The kinetics showed that at the applied condition, after S/F of 25 kg of CO2/kg of tucumã almond, practically all the extract was obtained, so this S/F was fixed in the further extractions. There was no significant difference in global yields obtained at pressures of 25 and 35 MPa. However, global yield was reduced at 15 MPa at all temperatures. Therefore, from a fixed S/F obtained during kinetics, SFE at 25 MPa and 40 °C seems to be recommended from the economic point of view, achieving global yield above 30%.