Angelica
furcijuga (A. furcijuga), as a material for traditional Chinese
medicine, has been widely used in Asian countries, such as China,
Korea, and Japan, for several centuries owing to its therapeutic effects.
In this study, A. furcijuga leaves
were used as starting materials to extract functional substances using
supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) at pressure and temperature
ranges of 20–40 MPa and 40–80 °C, respectively.
The extraction process was performed in a semibatch-type system with
extraction times of 15–120 min. The high-performance liquid
chromatography analysis indicated that kaempferol, ferulic acid, ligustilide,
and butylidenephthalide as selected functional substances were successfully
extracted under these operating conditions. An operating pressure
of 30 MPa with an extraction time of 60 min seems to be an appropriate
pressure to extract functional components from A. furcijuga leaves. The Hansen solubility parameter values and statistical analysis
showed that SC-CO2 with 10% ethanol addition is a feasible
tool to isolate these selected functional substances from the A. furcijuga matrix.