As we know essential oils don't contain heavy molecules and significant active chemical compounds as polyphenols, alkaloids...Furthermore, when we extract the essential oil, we obtain a tiny amount of volatile constituents and we spend a lot of interesting constituents in water. They are not yielded good (0.2 %- 3%...). On the other side, we recover an important amount and yield of botanical extract when we use polar solvents (Methanol, water...).
Don't you notice that essential oils are a waste of time!
It is like comparing a chair with a table and calling a chair a waste of time if you do not want to sit down. It looks like your interest is medicine and essential oils have application for medicine, but their primary application is elsewhere and have lots of benefits to humans as with those who produce them. You will have a lot to learn in the field and a starting point is not to call them a waste. Yield is important but having polyphenols or alkaloids in plants does not mean that they are drugs.
Thank you Mr. Solomon Habtemariam,
I appreciate very well your intervention.
In fact, I'm interested in the use of essential oils as antioxidants agents to prevent oxidative stress. We make in vitro activities.
I notice that the majority of essential oils are constituted from terpene hydrocarbons and those are formed only from double bonds, we don't have hydroxyl groups, we don't have oxygenated components... I'm talking about the majority of essential oils components, not all essential oils.
( Chizzola R. Regular monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes (essential oils). In: Ramawat KG, Mérillon JM, editors. Natural products. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer‐Verlag; 2013. pp. 2973–3008. doi:10.1007/978‐3‐642‐22144‐6_130 )
If we talk about the limonene as a hydrocarbon monoterpene, It expresses a weak activity against free radicals!
How can I convince someone that essential oils constituents are playing a pivot role in the pharmacological field?
Essential oils are one of the best plant constituents in the field of Perfumes ( some ess. oils are very very expensive and in the field of medicine).
Which procedure you were followed? The best one is using Clevenger Apparatus. It will give good amount of ess.oils.
Essential oils have direct applications while botanical extracts require a series of purification procedures to obtain an active component for direct application. The yield of a botanical extract is useless so long as the active component constitute about a mere fraction, say 0.5% of the crude extract. With essential oils its a different case. Refining an essential oil does not diminish even 10% of its total yield. Its in rare cases one directly use botanical extracts without tracking & isolating the exact active compound.
Essential oils are pure whereas extracts contain solvent along with the other components of solvent so there is need for purification which becomes a costly and time consuming process compared to essential oils.
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