3.2. Effects of temperature
The effects of temperature (70, 80, and 90 C) on the recovery of
the carotenoids are shown in Fig. 3. As can be seen, b-carotene
recovery slightly decreased with increasing temperature. This is
explicable as decreasing the temperature increased the density of
CO2 and solubility of b-carotene in supercritical CO2. Consequently,
the extraction rate of b-carotene increased with decreasing temperature.
In addition, under this condition, the change of CO2 density
was more effective than that of solute vapor pressure, and the
lower temperature might contribute to lower degradation of bcarotene.
On the other hand, lycopene recovery slightly increased with
increasing temperature. The increasing temperature caused an
increasing in vapor pressure of the lycopene, resulting in