Extraction of Essential Oils Video Lecture | Chemical Technology - Chemical Engineering

in this video you will learn how
essential oils are extracted you may
wonder how essential oils are extracted
from plants for basic extraction
techniques exist
distilling cold pressing resin tapping
an absolute oil extraction and I'd like
to cover each of these in detail let's
start with the most common of all the
essential oil extraction methods which
is steam distillation this process
allows us to extract essential oils from
very delicate plant materials during the
process it's critical to control
temperature and pressure to avoid
burning the oils during distillation
during steam distillation we place a
water bath over a heat source with the
aromatic plants suspended over the water
as the water is heated a steam is
generated and rises through the plant
material that steam now heavy with
essential oil molecules moves into a
condensing coil the condensing coil is
warm on the inside but surrounded by a
cool water bath causing the steam to
condense into floral water and essential
oils because water and oil do not
generally mix a natural separation
occurs where the floral water sinks to
the bottom and the essential oil rises
to the top the floral water can then be
drained and the essential oil is
collected and then sent to be decanted
and filtered another method used to
extract essential oils is cold pressing
this technique is specifically used for
citrus essential oils and fatty oils
citrus oils contain delicate citral
molecules that are broken down via steam
distillation and become very bitter
therefore Young Living does not accept
any citrus oils that have been steam
distilled only those that have been
cold-pressed fatty oils such as olive
oil almond oil jojoba oil and coconut
oil are also cold-pressed directly from
the plant material so what is cold
pressing envision a very simple
technique in which you place a very
heavy weight on top of a container
full of plant material the heavyweight
compresses the natural oils out of the
plant material and is in essence cold
pressing a third less common technique
is called resin tapping this technique
is used for a few of young livings
essential oils including frankincense
myrrh and copaiba during resin tapping
external plant parts are cut and this
allows the internal resin to seep out
and be collected then the resin is steam
distilled which gives rise to the
essential oils the final technique is
absolute oil extraction this is the most
complicated of essential oil extraction
techniques because it requires use of a
solvent a solvent is a substance that
helps to dissolve another substance in
the case of some essential oils the
plant material is so very delicate that
it would not survive an initial steam
distillation during absolute extraction
we add a solvent to the plant material
the solvent helps to pull the essential
oil out of the plant without
compromising the integrity of the oil
then in order to separate the solvent
from the essential oil a second
extraction uses steam to recover the
solvent and produce the final absolute
oil the absolute oil is then collected
and sent to our laboratory for testing
absolute oil extraction is only used for
jasmine and neroli essential oil and
it's important to note that a trace
residue of the solvent may be left
behind so ingestion of these oils is not
recommended however the solvent that is
left behind evaporates very quickly so
jasmine and neroli are perfectly safe
for topical applications and inhalation
we at Young Living are committed to
using the best possible extraction
method for each essential oil that we
offer our proprietary seed to seal
process is designed to preserve as much
of the botanicals precious chemical
profile as possible
you