Saturday, November 14, 2009

Distilling oils from flowers or leaves?

I need to distill oils or extract oils from plants or flowers to make a perfume, is there any sites with these experiments that go step by step, and whats the best and cheapest flower that you can extract good scented oil from?

Distilling oils from flowers or leaves?
Distilling oils from flowers or leaves is very simple.U can do that by simple distillation method or by steam distillation or even by chemical (solvents) like hexane %26amp; benzene.U can find a lot of material about ditillation or oil extraction on net but it depends upon the nature of oil as well eithere there is fixed oil or essential oil .Most of the flowers have essential oil which is done by distillation method while the fixed oil is extracted with hexane etc however if u r really interested in this case i can help u at some extent
Reply:I am not sure about the sites but I once did this for science fair. An Asian plant, Pandan is very good for this purpose. First, you would have to chop the leaves into tiny little pieces. Then, leave it in a bottle filled with eter and cooking oil (on top of it to preserve its smell.)for a week or so. Then, you will be able to see two layers of oil. One would be the layer of eter and the Pandan scented oil while the other is the cooking oil. Get the oil from the lower level and distill it. Voila! You would get the scented oil. My group went to states with that.





I hope this helps. ;)

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