I appreciate receiving any reprints or publications on this subject along with method employed for trapping the vapors.

Hello,

voice to a really interesting problem, shut up us as well. Loss of volatile substances in this way are very large, simply submit comparative analysis of these two methods (two cameras). The content of the resulting oil using Deryng camera is definitely greater, while using the camera Clevenger, these differences across a wide range of raw materials studied herbal and aromatic plants reach even 1%. It's like you see a big loss.

It is unfortunate, that distillation -one of the most widespread techniques in industry- suffers from 2 serious limitations: (i) it is energy-intensive. (ii) there is material loss even if there is utmost care. Therefore, we are living with a fact of disappointing low % yields or better  low % recoveries. In an incomplete "secretive" research, during a scientific exhibition, I separated an essential oil by steam distillation from a certain amount of a plant & then I did a separation of the same oil by solvent extraction using the same amount of plant. The extraction method gave a higher % recovery. I hope to continue this research in the future.

Dear Dr. Agnieszka

Though I noticed this problem many years ago, i did not seriously think about it to research on it. I was busy with field experiments developing agro-technology for these crops. My idea of raising this issue is to bring it to the notice of young essential oil researchers the need to work on the problem to improve recovery and quality of the resulting essential oil. 

 Dear Prof. Matar

Solvent extraction certainly gives higher yield but the problem is that the solvent employed extracts other plant chemicals along with volatile aromatic compounds.

You may connect the condensor to a U-tube cooled in liquid nitrogen to trap the very volatile compounds escaping during Clavenger method of extraction of essential oils and subsequently analyse them by GC-MS

Dear Dr. Isaiah

Can you please provide any reference where this technique was used for trapping volatile compounds or vapors? What will happen to water vapor?

Very interesting point has been raised by Dr Rao and I hope that researcher will surely find interesting results out of the experiments designed to study this fact.

Good luck to all those researchers who are interested in working on this problem.

Is it possible to divert these vapors into a trap containing adsorbents or solvents? Alternatively divert the vapors into a second condenser?

A very interesting challenge put forth by Dr. Rao.  A Senior scientist have suggested me to use a vacuum hydro-distillation with cold trap to compare against hydro-distillation using a continuous method like Clevenger, this on total different note. Would there be any use of a similar method?

It is a good idea. Check the distillation time, yield and composition of the essential oil relative to Clevenger hydrodistillation which is the most widely used technique for isolating essential oils from aromatic plants. good luck.

The water in the liquid nitrogen trap of very volatile vapors can be mopped up using anhydrous sodium sulphate

Dear Dr. Isaiah

Thanks for the information.

The liquid nitrogen trap for very volatile constituents is the same principle used to dry samples (remove solvent) using a vacuum pumps with a liquid nitrogen trap

I have been waiting for quite some time to receive any feed back from young RG friends working with essential oils whether any one of them initiated any experiments to trap and analyse these vapors.

 Dear Prof. Nizar

In your future experiments with aromatic plants and essential oils, please include this loss of vapors and their analysis as one of the research areas. I would have done it myself if I had sufficient service. I am retiring from my post this month end and is not likely to continue in the same field in future because of my other personal commitments.