Research Article Supercritical Extraction Process of Allspice Essential Oil Yasvet Y. Andrade-Avila, 1 Julian Cruz-Olivares, 1,2 César Pérez-Alonso, 1 Ciro Humberto Ortiz-Estrada, 3 and María del Carmen Chaparro-Mercado 4 1 Facultad de Qu´ ımica, Universidad Aut´ onoma del Estado de M´ exico, Paseo Col´ on Intersecci´ on Paseo Tollocan S/N, 50120 Toluca, MEX, Mexico 2 MCCM Ciencia E Innovaci´ on Tecnol´ ogica S.A. de C.V., Av. Benito Ju´ arez Sur 1002, Col. Universidad, 50130 Toluca, MEX, Mexico 3 Secretar´ ıa de Gobernaci´ on, CNS-Polic´ ıa Federal, Sistema de Desarrollo Policial, Poniente 116-590, Edifcio A, Tercer Piso, Col. Industrial Vallejo, Deleg. Azcapotzalco, 02300 Ciudad de M´ exico, Mexico 4 Departamento de Ingenier´ ıa y Ciencias Qu´ ımicas, Universidad Iberoamericana, Prol. Paseo de la Reforma 880, Lomas de Santa Fe, ´ Alvaro Obreg´ on, 01219 Ciudad de M´ exico, Mexico Correspondence should be addressed to Julian Cruz-Olivares; jcruzo@uaemex.mx Received 18 May 2017; Accepted 27 June 2017; Published 11 October 2017 Academic Editor: Mostafa Khajeh Copyright © 2017 Yasvet Y. Andrade-Avila et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Allspice essential oil was extracted with supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO 2 ) in a static process at three diferent temperatures (308.15, 313.15, and 318.15K) and four levels of pressure (100, 200, 300, and 360 bar). Te amount of oil extracted was measured at intervals of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 h; the most extraction yield reached was of 68.47% at 318.15 K, 360 bar, and 6 h of contact time. In this supercritical extraction process, the distribution coefcient (  ), the mean efective difusion coefcient ( ef ), the energy of activation (  ), the thermodynamic properties (Δ 0 , Δ 0 , and Δ 0 ), and the apparent solubility () expressed as mass fraction (w/w) were evaluated for the frst time. At the equilibrium the experimental apparent solubility data were successfully correlated with the modifed Chrastil equation. 1. Introduction Allspice, Pimenta dioica L. Merrill, or Pimenta ofcinalis belongs to the family Myrtaceae and is known in English as allspice or pimento, in French as piment jamaique or toute- epice, in Portuguese as pimenta da Jamaica, and in Spanish as pimienta gorda [1]. Traditionally the dried mature but not ripe berries are consumed as spice and commonly used for favoring food, but the essential oil of this fruit and the aqueous extracts of leaves of the pimento tree have been used as carminative, hypoglycemic, stimulant, antimicrobial, acaricide, and antifungal pharmaceutical preparations [2–8]. Moreover, since mankind has chosen to consume natural products the allspice essential oil is used massively in food, pharmaceutical, and perfume industries [9]. Due to its high content of eugenol, methyl eugenol, myrcene, and caryophyl- lene [7, 10] Te high levels of eugenol contained in clove essential oil give it strong biological activity and antimicrobial activity. Tis phenolic compound can denature proteins and reacts with cell membrane phospholipids changing their permeability [11]. Tis essential oil has been studied for diferent applications. Te antioxidant potential of allspice oil was evaluated by many researchers and all of them have found that this essential oil has good antioxidant activity and can be utilized as a natural antioxidant [7, 8, 12, 13]. In more specifc applications the allspice essential oil was used as an anti-infammatory [14, 15]. Also extraordinary applications of the leaves and berries extracts of allspice have been reported in the felds of medicine and materials science [16, 17]. Based on these studies, it is important to develop new and clean processes for extracting essential oils from solid matter. Traditionally, allspice essential oil was extracted by hydrodistillation, steam distillation, or solvent extraction. Recently, in concordance with green chemistry, supercritical fuid extraction has increased the attention as an important alternative to conventional methods. Supercritical fuids have adjustable extraction characteristics due to their density, Hindawi Journal of Chemistry Volume 2017, Article ID 6471684, 8 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/6471684