Hydrodistllation was used to erxtract essential oil from a natural product. What are the possible simple laboratory methods to isolate the essential oil from the distillate without loosing the oil through evaporation?
Thanks
Steam distillation is a practical method that does not require the use of a vacuum to recover the essential oils. Salting out is an old process used to separate a lighter essential oil from water, when the separation is difficult. Steam distillation was developed from water distillation. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119114796.ch7
Check https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/steam-distillation
Hi Dr Lawrence Olusegun Ajala . The new technique is called Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction: It allows for extraction of essential oils from plants when steam distillation is impossible, this method consists of passing a stream of CO2 at high pressure through aromatic plant materials to burst the essence pockets and extract the aromatic substances. See the link: https://www.pranarom.fr/en/content/15-the-distillation-of-essential-oils
@ Dr Wazwaz. I think Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction is a technique for extracts but not essential oils
It would be due to material amounts. Hydrodistillation and steam distillation are commonly used to obtain large amount of and small scale of essential oils, respectively. Steam distillation methods commonly use trap solution, thus the essential oil need evaporate to remove the trap solution. If there is large amount of ingredients and lots of yield of essential oil, the you can separate the oil from water using separatory funnel and dehydrate using sodium sulphate and glass filters.
There is no way to obtain pure essential oil without trap solution, if you have low amounts of ingredients.
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