Methods of production

Essential oils

Chemical composition

Terpenes, organic compounds consisting of isoprene units (containing five car­bon atoms), are by far the most dominant constituents of essential oils. Individual oils, however, may contain appreciable quantities of straight chain, aromatic, or heterocyclic compounds. Thus allyl sulfides are characteristics of oil of garlic, traces of indole and anthranilic acid esters are found in orange oil, straight chain alcohols and aldehydes are recognized in oil of violets, and phenols and other aromatic compounds are common to many oils.

Terpenes are built up from units of the simple five-carbon molecule isoprene. Both hydrocarbons and oxygenated compounds such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, esters, oxides, lactones, acetals, and phenols are responsible for the characteris­tic odours and flavours.

In some oils one or only a few components predominate: thus oil of wintergreen contains about 98 percent of methyl salicylate; orange oil, about 90 percent of d-limonene; bois de rose, 90 percent of linalool; and cassia, up to 95 percent of cinna-maldehyde. In most oils there is a mixture of anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred individual compounds. Trace components are very important, since they give the oil a characteristic and natural odour.

Essential oils are generally expensive, with prices ranging from several U.S. dol­lars per kilogram on the low side to several thousand dollars per kilogram. The high price of the natural oils coupled with their limited availability has encouraged a search for substitutes. Great progress has been made in the synthesis of individual components such as geraniol, citral, linalyl acetate, and the like. These synthetics have been combined with natural oils to extend supplies, and they have also been blended together in attempt to duplicate the oils themselves. Such reconstituted oils usually lack certain of the odour notes of the natural products, because of absence of trace ingredients, often unidentified, that may be present in the natural oils. They also tend to have a more « chemical » odour, because of trace impurities in the synthetics that are different from the components of natural oils.

Methods of production

The first step in the isolation of essential oils is crushing or grinding the plant material to reduce the particle size and to rupture some of the cell walls of oil-bearing glands. Steam distillation is by far the most common and important method of pro­duction, and extraction with cold fat (enfleurage) or hot fat ( maceration) is chiefly of historical importance.

Three different methods of steam distillation are practiced. In the oldest and sim­plest method a vessel containing water and the chopped or crushed plant material is heated by a direct flame, and the water vapour and volatile oil are recovered by a wa­ter-cooled condenser. This original method is being replaced by a process in which the plant material is suspended on a grid above the water level, and steam from a sec­ond vessel containing the plant material on a grid is heated to prevent condensation of steam, so that dry distillation is attained.

In southern France essential oils were extracted with cold fat long before the in­troduction of extraction with volatile solvents. This process is applied to flowers that do not yield an appreciable quantity of oil by steam distillation or whose odour is changed by contact with boiling water and steam. In this process, flowers are spread over a highly purified mixture of tallow and lard and are left for a period varying from 24 hours to 72 hours. During this time most of the flower oil is absorbed by the fat. The petals are then removed (defleurage), and the process is repeated until the fat is saturated with oil. The final product is called pomade (e. g. pomade de jasmine).

In most cases, it is possible to shorten the long enfleurage process by extracting the essential oils using molten fat for one to two hours at a temperature ranging from

about 45 "C to 80 °C (110 °F to 175 °C). The fat is filtered after each immersion, and after 10 to 20 extraction cycles the pomade is sold as such, or it may be extracted with alcohol to yield the oil residue.

Since both enfleurage and maceration are rather expensive processes, some es­sential-oil specialists have shifted almost completely to using volatile solvents for the recovery of essential oils from plant materials that could not be processed by steam distillation. Petroleum naphthas, benzene, and alcohol are the primary solvents.

A procedure called expression is applied only to citrus oils. The outer coloured peel is squeezed in presses, and the oil is decanted or centrifuged to separate water and cell debris. The method is used for oil of sweet and bitter orange, lemon, lime, mandarin, tangerine, bergamot, and grapefruit. Much oil is produced as a by-product of the concentraled-citrus-juice industry.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 508