There have been increased interests in exploiting the supercritical fluids (SCFs) technology during the recent years. With many advances and increased scholarly works in the possible applications of SCFs, it became important to review and discuss these works collectively. This will facilitate for the current and future researches to be directed and optimized. The supercritical fluid CO2 (SCCO2) remains the main agent in use as it offers many advantages including mainly the operation at relatively low temperature and the fact that toxic residues are not a problem after the completion of its use. While the SCF already found some applications in food industry represented by the commercial production of decaffeinated coffee, the commercial production of biopharmaceutical drug delivery systems have yet to start. Probably, particle formation and particle coating or encapsulation will be first to be introduced. In forensic evidence the technology may also contributes by the extraction of habit forming drugs from the hair of addicts. Environmentally the technology could be used in fate studies of materials such as pesticides. In chromatography the SCCO2 has shown to speed the analysis time and improve separation of enantiomers. The technology has also shown to be capable of sterilizing of heat sensitive materials without damage including proteins. The use of SCCO2 is however limited by the fact that optimization works are necessary including the requirement for co-processing materials and the operation at temperature and pressure greatly moved from the its critical points or the requirement for fluctuation of these operation parameters as the case in sterilization.
Keywords: Supercritical fluids, Particles formation, Extraction, Chromatography, Sterilization.