The Group Contribution Equation of State (GC-EoS) was extended to represent high-pressure phase equilibria behavior of
mixtures containing mono-, di-, triglycerides, and carbon dioxide (CO2). For this purpose, the alcohol-ester and the alcoholtriglyceride
binary group interaction parameters were regressed in this work, using experimental phase equilibria data from the
literature. The capability of the parameters obtained was assessed by applying the GC-EoS model to simulate the supercritical
CO2 fractionation of a complex glyceride mixture, which was produced by the ethanolysis of sunflower oil. Experimental data
was obtained in a countercurrent packed extraction column at pressures ranging from 16 to 25MPa and temperatures from 313
to 368 K. The GC-EoS model was applied in a completely predictive manner to simulate the phase equilibria behavior of the
multistage separation process. The chemical analysis of the glyceride mixture allowed a significant simplification of its complex
composition and thus, a simple and satisfactory simulation of the supercritical extraction process was achievedThis work has been financed by project ALIBIRD (S2009-AGR-1469) from the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid and project FUN-C-FOOD (CSD2007-00063, CONSOLIDER-INGENIO
2010)
