Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Steam distillation of Volatile oils

jtkelectroman - 23-4-2007 at 13:06

Well I added a high pressure chamber for holding herbs just above the water boiling chamber. This has allowed me to produce much higher pressures and actually obtain a small ammount of clove oil. I need to get a better hot plate and a pressure relief valve added to the unit with a pressure guage. I think once I have done that I should be able to obtain large ammounts of oils.

[Edited on 23-4-2007 by jtkelectroman]

[Edited on 23-4-2007 by jtkelectroman]

[Edited on 23-4-2007 by vulture]

[Edited on 27-4-2007 by jtkelectroman]

[Edited on 27-4-2007 by jtkelectroman]

04-27-07_202.jpg - 21kB

vulture - 23-4-2007 at 13:55

It's volatile oils...

Also, your picture is a bit fuzzy and your post is somewhat short. Please provide more details, a description perhaps?

jtkelectroman - 23-4-2007 at 14:18

Well for starters I took an old pressure cooker and attatched a homemade heat exchanger/condenser to it so that I could heat up large ammounts of water and use the steam inside of the chamber to distill essential oils from various plants. THe hot oils and steam pass throught the condenser and turn back into liquids. The oils separate from the water and float on top.
I tried extracting eugenol from cloves with this device but i seem to get alot of extremely fine oil dropplets mixed with the water wrather then two distinct layers. I've had the same problem with extracting cinnimaldehyde too.

Magpie - 23-4-2007 at 15:46

I've distilled cloves before using direct steam distillation as you are doing, only with glassware on a small scale. The distillate was extracted twice with dichloromethane then dried with anhydrous Na2SO4. The oil yield was 6.4%.

[Edited on by Magpie]

chemrox - 23-4-2007 at 16:17

I made mine as follows:

I took a small pressure cooker, about 2L, and drilled and tapped fluid fittings. On as a pressure release, theother as the steam line. Both of these come out the top. Then I drilled and tapped the base of a larger vessel, called a 'home canner' and on its top I added a pressure guage and a fitting for a 3/8 copper tubing. I made coil out of 10 feet of copper tubing as the condenser. It isn't working because the larger, extraction vessel needs a new seal and I'm not happy with the condenser. It gets hot so I need another vessel to contain the coil. I will fill it with water and ice during runs

jtkelectroman - 24-4-2007 at 10:10

Thanks for the tips magpie and chemrox. I should point out that my condenser is very effective at cooling the hot vapors as they come out as a cold liquid and the coolant(water) comes out steaming hot.

jtkelectroman - 24-4-2007 at 10:14

Quote:
Originally posted by Magpie
I've distilled cloves before using direct steam distillation as you are doing, only with glassware on a small scale. The distillate was extracted twice with dichloromethane then dried with anhydrous Na2SO4. The oil yield was 6.4%.

[Edited on by Magpie]

My first experiment with extracting oils from plants also used glasswhere and condensrs but my attempts were in vein as I could only produce minut mmounts of oils. With this unit I should be able to scale up the production of essential oils.

jtkelectroman - 24-4-2007 at 10:15

Quote:
Originally posted by chemrox
I made mine as follows:

I took a small pressure cooker, about 2L, and drilled and tapped fluid fittings. On as a pressure release, theother as the steam line. Both of these come out the top. Then I drilled and tapped the base of a larger vessel, called a 'home canner' and on its top I added a pressure guage and a fitting for a 3/8 copper tubing. I made coil out of 10 feet of copper tubing as the condenser. It isn't working because the larger, extraction vessel needs a new seal and I'm not happy with the condenser. It gets hot so I need another vessel to contain the coil. I will fill it with water and ice during runs

I may have to try adding another chamber onto the unit so that I can use high pressure steam to force the oils out of the herbs.