Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: shiffdaddy on December 31, 2016, 06:03:35 PM
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The other day I saw people tossing out all their old Christmas trees so I thought it would be a good idea to clip off a bunch of the fresh branches and steam distill to get the essential oils. So I cut off all the leaves so not many stems were there and stuffed them into a 500ml round bottom and set up for the distillation.
I did this 3 times and ended up with about 2 ml of oil that I could separate and like 1000ml of the water distillate (that smells amazing actually). The problem I have is that after letting the distillate sit over the next day I can clearly see tons of oil stuck on the walls all over the container. I tried heating it up to see if the oil would float to the top but didn't really work, when I shook it that was the worst idea because it just emulsified it and made it into a white liquid so I had to let it resettle out and the same thing happened where its all over the sides.
Would a brine solution better separate the oil from the water? Any ideas on what I can do? This is my first time doing essential oils so I am not very experienced with this.
Ben
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Extraction with organic solvent insoluble in water.
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I hope you do it just for fun with no commercial ambition, because this is exactly what the paper industry does as a by-product of paper production from trees.The resulting turpentine is dirt-cheap, its half-processed commodities too: pinenes, cis-pinane (floor cleaner with pine scent), myrcene and a few dozens of perfume components.
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hahaha yeah just for fun, cant do much with 2 ml of Christmas tree juice. Just for me to smell throughout the year. I was hoping to do it without using any solvents as most of them have some sort of smell yeah? I was reading pentane or heptane I think were what the guy on youtube were using.
I think I remember my organics teacher a few years back saying that using a brine solution will make the aqueous layer heavier (if the bottom layer) and help separate any stubborn oils but not sure if I'm remembering this correctly.