Key words: milk Thistle fruit, supercritical fluid extraction, carbon dioxide, oil, experiment planning
Milk Thistle [Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn], which grows in the Republic of Dagestan,
is a promising raw material for obtaining broad-spectrum medicines. Milk Thistle fruit oil,
as a source of higher polyunsaturated carboxylic acids, has anti-inflammatory, woundhealing,
regenerating and antioxidant effects. The process of supercritical fluid extraction
of fatty oil from milk Thistle fruits with carbon dioxide is optimized using a second-order
full-factor uniform plan. The influence of pressure, temperature, and process duration on
the extract yield was evaluated. According to the model used, the optimal conditions are:
a pressure of 41,8 MPa, a temperature of 70 °C, and an extraction time of 140 minutes.
When conducting a confirmation experiment under these conditions, the extract yield
was 25.9 %, which is only 0.5% less than the maximum yield obtained by exhaustive
extraction with n-hexane. The relative error of the model was 1.5%.
doi:10.1134/S1990793121070125