Method of extracting lutein/xanthophylls from natural materials and highly purified lutein/xanthophylls obtained from the method thereof

The present invention provides the new method for extracting lutein from natural materials wherein the said method comprises of modification of natural lutein ester in the natural materials to free lutein and/or low molecular weight lutein ester, extraction of the said natural materials with supercritical fluid at the optimal conditions. The said method yields high amount of crude lutein with high purity due to the mild condition used for extraction. Therefore, no degradation of the desired product is occurred. The crude lutein can be further purified with chromatography in order to obtain the highly purified lutein. The method according to this invention can be applied to the extraction of xanthophylls or others beside lutein.