Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction of gel-derived polymer foams

Supercritical fluid technology has been used in industry for the extraction and separation of materials in a number of applications such as food preparation and petroleum processing. Gel-derived microcellular polymer foam technology, developed at Sandia, requires the extraction of organic solvents from thermally-induced phase separated gels to yield microcellular foams. We have applied supercritical fluid extraction technology to these specialized materials by using supercritical carbon dioxide to extract a variety of organic solvents from gels to produce foams. Our supercritical extraction process will be described, as well as high pressure equipment that is used to perform the extractions. The results of gel extraction trails and qualitative supercritical carbon dioxide/solvent miscibility experiments will also be presented. We plan to pursue other related areas in this field, including supercritical fluid cleaning, quantitative solubility studies, and supercritical fluid chromatography.