Pressurized liquid extraction

PLE has been consolidated as a high-throughput and green extraction technique for the sustainable extraction of bioactive compounds from natural sources and for the determination of a broad variety of analytes of interest in food and environmental samples. In this chapter, a general overview about the principles and applications of pressurized liquid extraction is provided. The basic principles of PLE and the main parameters affecting its extraction performance (e.g., solvents, adsorbents, pressure, and temperature), along with a general description of the instrumentation, are discussed in 13.2 Principles of PLE-Parameters Affecting Performance, 13.3 Instrumentation. Furthermore a general insight about the most relevant applicability of PLE is provided in Section 13.4, with special emphasis on the analysis of organic contaminants, toxins, and residues and on the diversity of natural compounds that can be extracted from different natural matrices.