I made my own lemony pine essential oil

[passedpawn]

Pretty simple. There's a long-needled fir that I came across that has a VERY lemony pine aroma. I'm extracting the oils from that by steam extraction.

The oil is VERY aromatic. I put a bit on my fingers and rub it and it produces quite an aroma, lasts quite a while.

I'm not really sure how to use it, but I'll be making soap again soon so I guess I'll use some of it. (I made a lifetime supply of soap a year or two ago : ) ).

 

[lsg]

Wow, looks like quite a setup. How much essential oil did you get per pound of material?

 

[passedpawn]

I didn't weigh the pine needles, but it was about half of a Home Depot bucket full, somewhat compact. I use scissors to remove the larger sticks and chop it up into clumps that will fit into the bioflask.

This produced 5 ml /0.25 oz / 6 grams (that's a 15mL vial below). Also, a product of steam distillation is the hydrasol, which is heavily-perfumed water. There is at least a quart or two of that phase. I didn't save it this time, but I suppose I should have - it's obviously distilled water and could have been used in the soap

Here's a better picture of the apparatus. You can see the general flow: boil flask -> biomass flask -> condenser -> oil/water separator.

The bucket on the right has icewater and a small pond pump that pushes cold water up the outer sleeve of the condenser, and the steam condenses back to liquid in the spiral.

Those are hop buds in there - they produce a ton of oil! I've attempted to do the same with flowers from my gardenia bush, but they did not produce anything. Lavender is next.

 

[Lensi]

I love your setup!
I have also tried steam extraction with a much less professional setup with ginger.

 

[Rowan]

Wow, that looks like great fun. I would definitely love to try something like that with English lavender one day and use it in my creams.

I read a blog of a soapmaker who produces essential oils for her soaps, in a small town called Lewes. Apparently even the time of day the lavender is picked can affect the scent of the oil.

Does it take a long time to produce the oil?

 

[passedpawn]

Each batch takes a couple of hours. Successive batches are necessary to produce a good amount of oil. What I show above was probably 5 or 6 batches, maybe over a couple of days.

You don't have to watch it though. But you do have to remove the spent biomass and replace. That part takes only a minute or two. If you get busy and don't get to it, it's no problem. The oil-water separator there is pretty neat in that the water will drain off (I have a mason jar there) while the oil layer keeps getting deeper. So, you don't have to worry about your hard-gained oil overflowing somewhere.

 

[sarasvati]

Oh, wow! This looks very scientific! Lemony pine sounds really good. It must smell wonderful!

 

[passedpawn]

Smells great. This is the second time I've extracted from that same pine tree. The first time, the vial tipped over and I lost all of the oil.

I'm getting ready to make shaving soap next... not sure if I'll use it in that or not. But I will use it soon.

I broke the boil flask so I'm waiting on another right now before I make more EO's

 

[Zany_in_CO]

So cool! Thanks for sharing!