ABSTRACT
Abstract This study aims to find the best conditions for the extraction of Zingiber officinale essential oil using the supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), steam distillation (SD) and hydrodistillation (HD) techniques, regarding the maximum oil yield. For the HD technique is evaluated the best ratio between plant mass and water volume and for SFE and SD the pressure condition was investigated. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to evaluate the similarity between the composition of the essential oil in different pressures and extraction methods. The experimental extraction curve was plotted and three different mathematical models were used to fit the data for SD and SFE methods, obtaining the relevant mass transfer parameters. The essential oil compounds were identified by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), being α-zingiberene the main component with different contents (from 11.9 to 28.9%). The best condition for the SFE was 100 bar, 40 °C (0.0508 goil/gplant) with 19.34% of α-zingiberene; for the SD, 3 bar (133 °C) (0.00616 goil/gplant) with 28.9% of α-zingiberene; and HD, the volume of 750 mL (0.006988 goil/gplant) with 15.70% of α-zingiberene, all measured on a dry basis.