BACKGROUND: Supercritical CO2 enrichment of omega3 essential fatty acids (FAs) from Tyulka oil, using a batch process was investigated. Fractional factorial design was applied to evaluate the effects of the five process parameters: pressure (20.26 to 25.33 MPa); temperature (40 to 50 degrees C); packing fraction (0.5 to 0.7); modifier fraction (2 to 5%); and dynamic time (15 to 25 min), and their binary interactions on the enrichment of extracted omega3 FAs. By employing experimental design and analysis of variance, the variables were evaluated according to the significance of their effect on the yield of extracted omega3. RESULTS: The experimental results confirmed that pressure and dynamic time were the most important factors affecting enrichment of omega3. The amount of modifier in the feed also showed an increasing effect on the response. The binary interaction effects were investigated, and are discussed in detail. CONCLUSION: Optimum conditions were found at 25.33 MPa, 46.65 degrees C, packing fraction 0.50, modifier 5% and dynamic time 25 min, improving the enrichment of omega3 FAs up to 2.9 times. (C) 2009 Society of Chemical Industry