According to definitions, in order to obtain essential oils we need to extract the raw material with hydro-distillation. Since my raw material is a seed (with tough seed coat), and since hydro-distillation won't result in high amount of essential oil, I was thinking maybe enzyme pretreatment will be a good idea for optimizing that. But first I wanna make sure if its a suitable pretreatment method.
Looking forward to hear your experiences.
Thank you in advance~
Do you actually need the essential oils from the seed or just the oil? It is difficult to extract EO from seed as you have discovered. CO2 extraction may be a better option. If you just want an oil, an expeller might be the best option.
What would you expect an enzyme to do?
Jacob Simons, Thanks for your kind reply. I just need the essential oil. I don't wanna extract the oil. The only methods available for me hydrodistillation and microwave extraction. So I thought maybe if I use enzyme-assisted pretreatment it might be result in higher amounts of final amount. I expect enzyme to destroy seed coat as much as possible. Because as far as I know the essential oil glands of my subject seed placed in its seed coat structure.
But since I just studied this method based on previous researches, I don't know if it is really useful or not.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408390802248775
Regards
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