The knowledge of the vapor pressures of natural compounds, as well as their critical properties are of great interest for the application of supercritical extraction and supercritical impregnation dye, and necessary for the thermodynamic modeling of equilibria phase. The scarcity of experimental data for these compounds results from their low volatility or easiness to degrade at low temperatures, therefore, requires the use of special methods. In this work, the vapor pressures of curcumin, nicotine, d-limonene, ß-myrcene, citronellal and linalool were determined through a method based on the retention time in a gas chromatographer column. A flame ionization detector and a column with non-polar stationary phase were used, under isothermal conditions. This method has the advantages of giving faster analysis, uses small size samples and shows good reproducibility. For the determination of the vapor pressure of these natural compounds, the normal boiling or fusion temperatures and the vapor pressures of the homologous series of these compounds is required.
gas chromatography; group contribution method and homologous compounds; vapor pressure
