European Journal of Medicinal Plants

The Brazilian ginseng Pfaffia glomerata (Spreng.) Pedersen belongs to the Amaranthaceae family and has as its main component β-ecdysone, a phytoecdysteroid, found in the roots, stem, flowers and leaves of the plant. In the last years sustainability and the environment concern were decisive for the emerging supercritical fluid extraction and pressurized fluid extraction technologies to obtain biocomposites from the plant. These extraction technologies use solvents (CO₂, ethanol and water) and uses as controllable parameters pressure, flow, time and temperature. The combination of these factors generates atoxicity, no residue in the final extract and have a reduced energy cost and an excellent extraction yield. This work reviews the literature from 2007 to 2020 on the use of clean technology to obtain chemical biocomposites of interest in the areas of biology, agronomy, food and pharmaceutics. It is was concluded that the supercritical fluid extraction and pressurized liquid extraction extracts were very efficient in obtaining β-ecdysone, since both presents low energy consumption, uses environmentally correct solvents which reduces harmful effects on the environment. Finally, to choose the best technology for extraction of other biocomposites depends on the chemical compound of interest.