Extracting Oils from Organic Material

[GregPerry]

I would like to know how to extract oils from organic material. I would like to set up a little system at home where I would be able to extract oils from leaves, flowers, etc...
I would appreciate some ideas on what process would be involved.

Thanks

 

[nbucska]

You must think about VOLATILE oils -- well, the simplest
would be destillation with steam.

For larger quantities you may recover most of the heat with
heat-pump or you may use vacuum destillation with a
counterflow system. <nbucska@pcperipherals.com>

 

[TD2K]

One link:

http://www.homestore.com/HomeGarden/Gardening/Features/Flowers/Fragrance.asp

Try

http://www.google.com

and 'flower oil extraction', lots of hits. I have don't any personal experience to share with you.

 

[sciguyjim]

I once experimented with extraction of oils from orange peels via refluxing with dichloromethane and extraction of chlorophyll from leaves with alcohol and water. Personally, I'm more familiar with solvent extraction so I have the feeling that you'd be able to extract more oils this way than via steam distillation. Of course, you then have to remove the solvent from your oil before use, so you'd want to use a low boiling solvent that can evaporate easily. You also need to be aware of solvent flamability and do the refluxing with proper heating and ventilation. Some possible solvents would be freons, ethyl ether, ethyl alcohol, pentane, and petroleum ether. Some of the volatile oils are heat sensitive and some can oxidize over time so you might want to look into adding some kind of preservative or stabilizer to your oil.

 

[Rocco8]

See Eden Labs

http://www.edenlabs.org

 

[vnmarkande]

I do not think this is something that can be done at home.
You could try EDC or Methanol. These would, I guess, extract many other things (pigments, proteins, etc. ) along with component you want!
Separating these ingredients would be a tougher exercise.

 

[sciguyjim]

vnmarkande,
You are correct about the solvents extracting many other things besides fragrance oils, and about the separation being difficult. With that in mind, I would go with the steam distillation for better purity.

 

[GregPerry]

Thanks for all the input guys.

With steam distillation would I just put the material in some water bring it to the boil and collect the vapour. Then seperate the oil from the water?

Is it that simple?

THanks

 

[sciguyjim]

Boiling the material and collecting the condensed oil and water vapors would work. Another way would be to pass steam through a &quot;tube&quot; of your material (for high contact efficiency) and let the steam carry out the volatile oils for condensation and separation. I don't know which method would be better, but your method would be easier.