A Review on Solubility Studies of Industrially Important Compounds in Supercritical CO ₂

Supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO 2 ) has proven to be a green and benign solvent for industrial applications in various domains including material processing, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, food, and agriculture because of its tunable solubility property. Till date, extensive research has been carried out generating solubility data, phase equilibria study, model equations, and measurement techniques which are important for industrial process development. But literature lacks a consolidated report having all these studies together at one place which is helpful to users to explore further. The present review summarizes the solubilities of important pharmaceutical compounds, namely fine chemicals, biological compounds, inorganic compounds, metal complexes and catalysts, their measurement techniques and correlation of solubility data with theoretical models. Collection of 254 molecules with aforementioned studies in addition to the list of 17 industries running worldwide using scCO 2 provide a clear foresight to the industrial usefulness of scCO 2 as green solvent. The review projects the future research prospects, mitigating the gaps of solubility data and theoretical studies needed for scCO 2 to be more applicable to reaction chemistry for the industrial practices.