While finding the chemistry of fruits and peels is abundant it is Horrendous trying to find an answer to this one question: Does drying the peel of
fruits lose oil? Seeing that when water is lost, as I understand it, it allows the cells containing the oil to be ruptured, at least this is the
impression I am getting from various non-chemistry sites. (Natural drying at room temperature not in the sun)
[Edited on 8-7-2014 by CHRIS25]
Should have added that the query stems from reading in a research PDF that they dried orange peel and ground it into powder and extracted oil. This
was a surprise.
[Edited on 8-7-2014 by CHRIS25]aga - 8-7-2014 at 11:14
Guess the only way to know for sure will be to dry some peel, and do two distillations - one with the dried, one with fresh, and see how much you get.
Cell Activity/Lifetime, Cell wall selective porosity, relative BP of water and Windowlene ... all way too complex to calculate.
Edit: freezing should rupture the cell walls too.
[Edited on 8-7-2014 by aga]
it seems different for different plants
quantime - 8-7-2014 at 11:46
To the best of my experiments:
Fresh orange peel works, dry orange peel does not work.
Dry lavender works, I have not tried wet lavender.
Dry nutmeg works, I have no nutmeg plants around.
Wet honey suckle works, dry honey suckle does not work.
I can't figure this out either.argyrium - 8-7-2014 at 11:52
This is slightly OT - but- I routinely carefully 'peel' lemon, orange and mandarin oranges, place them on paper toweling and stuff into a jar full of
DRIERITE.
Dries it beautifully in a day or two. Great for cooking. From what I can determine by the nose test, as long as the peels are stored well sealed, the
fragrance does not change much. Orange seems to be more labile than lemon or mandarin. They all remain crisp and retain their bright (slightly muted)
color - again if tightly sealed & away from light.
As far as grinding this in a mill, be prepared to spend some time cleaning the grinder. The oils do mix with the other cellular material and can
become quite thick.
PS. As I use this in food, before peeling I wash the fruits WELL w/ dish detergent and rinse to remove as much of the wax and possible
pesticide/anti-fungals that are probably present on commercial produce.
[Edited on 8-7-2014 by argyrium]vmelkon - 8-7-2014 at 13:25
I guess so.
I had extracted D-limonene from oranges and it oxidizes in air from what I read. The sample developed a skin on the liquid D-limonene so I put the
sample in a bottle and in the freezer.
