12-28-02 02:37
No 393322
i'm interested in learning proper lab techniques, so i'm doing alot of etra steps in my work to get good at lab work. i've been sitting around distilling water and booze and other simple shit to get the hang of it. i'm doing ok.
i have sassafras trees all around me, living on the eastern seaboard...so i'm going to steam distill my sassy rather than buy it when i decide to make my soap. time consuming, sure...but i'm refining my skills anyhow, and i'm in no rush. i've been practicing on bay leaves and attempting to distill eugenol (sp?) from them, but it seems that i've distilled about 99.9% water and just a thin layer of oil. anybody have any pointers?
thanks!
(Title on BackOrder)
12-28-02 03:29
No 393331
have you been extracting your oil back from your steam distillate with a NP solvent? You'd be surprised at how much of your oil is somewhat water miscible and trapped in there.
Also be sure to freeze and thaw your raw plant material a few times to break up the cellular structure so that the oils can be more easily extracted.
And as always, UTFSE! This topic has been beat to death in previous threads that can all be found in the search engine. If you have any specific questions to ask, bring them back to this thread. Don't expect an answer if they've been answered numerous times before.
(Stranger)
12-28-02 03:35
No 393332
dry out the place... break it up as much as possible...
also what are you useing to distill? because that might be a problem
(Hive Addict)
12-28-02 08:00
No 393409
when you do the steam distillation, put a shitload of salt in your recieving flask, to keep the water layer saturated with NaCl, which will make sure that all of your oil separates out into it's own layer.
(Newbee)
12-28-02 15:13
No 393475
i read bubbleplates post on tfse.
i'm thinking the following-
-i'll set up like before, generating steam from the bottom flask in an oil bath on top of a hotplate/stirrer...
but this time i'll do the following-
-run a tube snugly through a thermometer adapter from the generator to the middle neck of a three neck rbf turned in such a way to make it look like an "E" (ha!)...
-the steam goes in the middle neck, and the condensed water should run out the bottom neck through a tube and back into an addition funnel plugged into a neck of the steam generator...
-when the funnel gets full enough, i'll dump the contents back into the steam generating flask for further use.
good?
(Title on BackOrder)
12-29-02 04:52
No 393685
Keep in mind that your sassafras oil will evaporate off into the atmosphere if you do not condense the steam to a reasonable temperature. You are going to have to build some sort of condenser to condense the steam in; I highly doubt a flask will do the job.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There's no use being a fool about it.