This is fantastic. Really interesting see exactly how essential oil is made. As a typical lay customer of essential oils, it makes me really appreciate the number of steps involved in extracting just a few millilitres of oil. Nice work, my friend.
Step 2: Hire a chemist to supervise you at the beginning ;-) Maybe when you buy the pack too, because you'll need for sure something that is not there! Anyway, i enjoyed all the video!
There used to be a place called Edmunds Scientific Company in New Jersey but I have no clue at all as to what they have been doing because the last time I bought anything from them was maybe around 1996 ...?
I dont always make essential oils but when I do, I do it by the seaside lab.... just teasing - thanks for the tutorial. I have an essential oil distiller that works fine, but love how you showed just how much essential oils you actually receive after all that plant materials. Great video.
I hope I live by the sea shore tooo haha. Well citrus essential oils are quite yieldy, I mean, lemon peel has a lot of it compared to other essential oils. If you like the video I invite you to watch my latest one about the same topic, much better than this one :D
The collected water that condensed is Lemon Hydrosol which is used in many cosmetic products as well - dont throw that away, as it contains trace amounts of the lemon oil as well. (This is true of all hydrosols)
Yeah, I didn't think that was oil. I actually did this with oranges, just to do it, and what I got would evaporate completely, no residue at all. Not really like oil.
I know this video is a few years old but I have a few comments on the extraction: You should use a smaller amount of water or a larger separatory funnel, the total volume of liquid is way too much for that size of container. It will also allow you to shake the separatory funnel much harder, giving you a better extraction result per run. Another thing is that you should use at least a quarter of the volume of the aqueuos phase per run. So you would add 100 mL of solvent (hexane) to 400 mL of aqueous phase. You're using way less than would be standard practice. Using a larger amount of solvent will also allow you to lose two or three drops w/o dropping your yield too much, so that your combined organic layers will contain much less water. You should also perform at least three rounds of extraction, this is due to Nernst's distribution law: Use little (not too little) amount of solvent per round and do more rounds; doing it three times with 50 mL will be better than doing it once with 150 mL. If you can get your hands on it, try using DCM or ethyl acetate if the latter dissolves limonene sufficiently I'm not sure. DCM is much easier to get rid of than the hexane; ethyl acetate is way less harmful than both of those. I also would suggest using funnels to transfer liquids. Secondly, since I'm only now watching the full video: You should use an oil bath to boil the water! Never place a flask directly onto the heating plate since this will cause a great deal of thermal stress in the glass because the heat distribution is very uneven. Thermal stress in glass means that it can break, as I'm sure you know. So you could use some mineral oil or vegetable oil (obv. easier to obtain) with a high smoke point and heat that up to about 120 °C so the inside of your vessel will reach 100 °C. Source: Working on my Master's in Chemistry.
It is such a great video! very detailed and with useful descriptions at each step, excellent job thank you! Just a comment: title says "Steam distillation" but, according to what I've found in literature this is a "water distillaion" as a "steam distillation" has to have 2 flasks: a first flask to contain the water that will produce steam, then steam will enter in a second flask to then pass through the condensator and so on...
Thank you for watching!! Seems like even that sound I got from one of this videos on YT that longs 1 hour has copyright to it... I will probably have to record my own sea sound or even synthetise it... Whatch my other chemistry videos if you want!!!!
By 0:30 I've already paused this video to give it a thumbs-up because I'm impressed you're grating a lemon using the blind side of a box grater and haven't drawn blood.
The moment the technology is able to reproduce the sense of smell when you watch a video, I think you will be pleased that I uploaded that :D I can tell you its poisonus (which, far away from fiction, the oil is skin and eye irritant and toxic by ingestion) is balanced with the good smell it has. It is just like lemon (ofc) but very, veeeeery, concentrated (like having 4 lemons in a vial maybe??)
I never knew that one needs to connect the water inlet to the condenser in the opposite direction of the vapor flow. I'm sure glad I picked that up while watching your video. Thanks for that tip.
Yes always like this! The idea is to get heat out as soon as possible :D- This video is old, check this one better ruclips.net/video/NlgZACkf3Q4/видео.html&ab_channel=NationOfOurHobbies
It did yes¡¡¡ What it is also interesting is that the water distilled, where the oil forms a phase above it, does not smell that good. It has some kind of smell like if you boil lemon juice and then drink it (it is difficult to explain, and more in not my language :D ) Check out my other lavender oil extraction :)
Yes it has become my own style since the begining of my channel. Now I cant imagine doing a video without that. If you liked this video go check my new lemon essential oil one. The sound of the waves that you hear there has been recorded by me hehe
sure wish i could do this stuff. but i live in Texas, where chemistry is illegal and glassware requires permits and 60-90 days approval waiting and rejection, then submission to random police inspections for the durration of ownership of the glassware. but i can go buy a gun and 1000 rounds of ammo and be out the door after a 15 minute background check (i know this from experience, ive done it 6 times) #logic!
Actually there are certain items that will be flagged and tracked when not purchased by a school or lab in some areas. Just like limiting the amount of cold medicine and pesticides you can purchase. It helps to cut down amateur ‘I’m gonna be a drug lord’ basement enterprises. So if you aren’t selling or gifting essential oil products that you have made and you’ve purchased a crap ton of equipment, you may get a visit to see what’s up.
amazing! now i understand why essential oils are expensive! either by hand or machines, it is a complex process :D salute to all chemists in the oil industry!
I collect fragrances and I have a few by Christian Dior. I’ve read that Dior has their own gardens and they use pure essential oils for their perfumes. They are more expensive, now I know why.
As a 2nd year biobased chemist I was wondering why you added the hexane to dissolve the oil. Oil is insoluble in water so 2 layers would already be formed therefore the L/L-extraction step would be unnecessary in my perspective. I can imagine using hexane for getting a higher yield of final product by washing the aqueous layer with it but the amount of extra oil seemed to be marginal. Am I right?
Yes you are completely right. I used hexane not to extract more oil from the water phase, because as you said, it s insoluble in it, but to wash the remaining that could be in the funnel after draining it. As you see Im working with very small ammounts of oil so every loss will affect a lot in my yield. If I extract more peels and get much more oil I probably would not use hexane, as it is easy to seprate two well differenced and significant ammounts of liquid phases. I wash the aqueos phase several times. That is done both to wash the possible reamining oil in the water and to wash the funnel itself. Im not using the oil for any application already so using hexane was not an issue Seems like every coment from here is about using or not using hexane D:. Many people ask me that. Ill give you upvote for the comment so it should be on top. I hope people read this comment before asking me the same question again haha. Anyway thanks for commenting :D Check out my other videos tooo :)
I see, now I understand. Indeed when the oil isn't used for any health purposes, then hexane can be used as a solvent. However, a comparable solvent like pentane or maybe even better; heptane should do the job as well without risking neurotoxic poisoning.
You can dry the organic phase with anhydrous sodium or magnesium sulfate and filtrate to eliminate this water contamination at the end. For this, I also recommend to use a little bit more hexane...
Que buen video. A pesar de que no entiendo nada de química y poco de inglés me resultó muy interesante... No sé cómo llegué hasta acá, estaba buscando sobre cómo hacer perfumes caseros sin comprar esencias prefabricadas y me topé con esto pero creo que... Me fui un poco al otro extremo de complejidad jeje. Igualmente ojalá tuviera ese equipo de laboratorio como para animarme a intentarlo y aprender más del tema. Note que hablas español leyendo los comentarios y por el "limón (hexnosequé)" que anotaste en el frasco contenedor. Gracias por el video y tu dedicación
Muchas gracias!!! En mi opinión cualquiera puede hacer lo que yo he hecho aquí, incluso sin el uso de disolventes orgánicos, para cosas como elaboración de perfumes y jabones. En internet hay infinidad de paginas que venden este tipo de aparatos, si estas interesado, puedes empezar por eBay ;D Un saludo y gracias por el comentario!!!
The fractionation part has some shortcomings. First of all you should not boil the hexane+oil mixture because while doing so some oil would definitely have escaped and Secondly, you should have used Activated Anhydrous Sodium Sulphate or Sodium Chloride to remove water from the essential oil.
Thanks, glad to hear you found what you were looking for. Stay tuned to my channel, I will probably reupload the same video but using a much bigger essential oil distiller :D
The first time I saw this video with all that chemistry tools, I thought it was complicated. Now I know there is a much simple way to do it with basic kitchen stuff.
the tip with the cut rubber ball is nice, I, like probably others, always have problems with some Quickfit adapters, apart from the particularly expensive ones with PTFA seals
This is how mainly essential oils are made. Indeed, industry scale essential oils are distilled continuously. Thus, the solvent extraction step is redundant. Since (purely) solvent extration is another common method to extract fragrances, the products are called 'absolute' instead of 'essence oil'. There are two types of distillation. This video demonstrates water distillation where the raw naterial is soaked in the water. Another one is steam distillation, which is more common, places the raw material on a mesh or any holed container upon a pool of steaming water, and the steam goes through the raw material to extract the fragrances. There is a disadvantage of distillations. There are always more than traces of fragrance dissolved in water. Thus, fragrances of essential oil are often described as 'incomplete' compared with absolutes. The remaining water is not discarded. It calls 'hydrosol', while itself is also somewhat fragrant and is also used in purfumery. Some hydrosols (i.e. rose) can have strong fragrance enough to replace essential oils in some applications. P.S. but there is a bit of epic fail as you use lemon peel for this demonstration. Citrus fruits peel oils are usually extracted by cold pressing without any distillations. But you yet do a good demonstration about distillation❤
You made great effort to make the video. As far as i know cold-press extraction is the one used to extract citrus essential oils. Using hexane which is very toxic makes the extracted oil dangerous for human use. Thank you for uploading though.
Thanks for watching! I used hexane here to recover all the EO that could remain stuck to the glassware while working, but of course, that is not necessary. In fact I demonstrated that in my last video, check it out here, I am sure you will enjoy it ;) ruclips.net/video/NlgZACkf3Q4/видео.html
@@Glattuh Thanks for replying ! I understand you made choices based on what you need the EO for and what you have available. I will make sure to watch your last video. Keep up the hard work :)
Nice video though, I think its a good tip if you can peel the zest without getting pith(white color portion). I did it by peeling in thin slices using a slicer and cutting the orange peels to small sizes with a scissor as necessary. Although, my other group got no oil from distill as they peel the orange in large size with the pith. I'm not sure if the normal yield of 4% possible for limonene. I got 2.33% on mine. There was a lot of oil left in the separatory funnel and using the hexane would have help getting a higher yield as water is polar and hexane with oil is non-polar, which in my case, my lab class did not provide us hexane. Also, we used a long-stemmed pipet to draw the oil from water in the separatory funnel and there was no water on the end product as per the IR-spectrum.
Thanks for the comment¡ It feels weird that you didnt get any oil in that batch (with all the peel involved). Citrics give oils with no problem in my experience. I have also tried it with orange, tangerine and grapefruit and they all gave me nice and smelly oils¡ Also, good to know that the oil does not contain any water by IR analysis, I wish I could do some of that inmy channel someday ;D
Nation Of Our Hobbies wow I didn't expect a reply, thank you for reading my comment!! It was actually weird that my other group did not get any oil, so we and our instructor assume that it was due to the large orange peels with the thick pith. I haven't actually tried with tangerine, grapefruit, its good to know they gave oil. Also, in our other experiments, when using fractional distills, we used aluminum foil to cover around the fractionating column. Hopefully, you will post more videos of your experiments :O
So we can asume raw material has to be treated before extracting the oil, I will keep that in mind in my next essential oil video. Maybe by reducing it size in a blender before adding it to the extraction flask? I think that is a good idea if the blender can be washed several times with water so little oil remain in the walls of it Talking about other thing, may I ask what are you studying? I am just curious ;D And yes, I have a lot of incoming projects to film in my channel. Hope I can begin by the next year, because I have a surprise that will boost the channelm (Cant talk more about it hehe) ;D
@@Glattuh Yep you are right! Also, that's a good idea to reduce the raw material size. I am actually studying to become a biochemist in CA and a 2nd-year student. The distillation experiment is one of our Ochem labs, so yeah. However, can wait to see your new projects! Best of Luck! :O
Considering I just watched a chick make lilac Essential oil using a strainer, cheese cloth, a bowl, and a pan(the only things unusual being the grapeseed oil and the cheese cloth), it doesn't really require nearly this amount of gear unless you want high purity stuff which will need diluting afterwards anyways.
totally cool! that lemon oil extraction must have smelled fantastic! you've got v.good o-chem lab skills. i hope your future includes finding how how are chem can take you (or how far you can take it) -sc3dacity
Of course¡¡ I bought it as a pack, including a Vigreux column, wich has not beeing saw in any of my videos yet. Check it out: www.labbox.com/en/products/F0400/x450/APP4/ All joints are 29/32 - 500ml flat bottomed flask (From other pack. Distillation pack was meant attacj to 250ml round bottomed flask) - Liebig-West refrigerator, 250mm - Collector, distillation and thermometer adapters - POM clamps - Tipical metalware. I built the stand by myself using plaster and steel rod Thanks for commenting¡¡¡ Check out my other videos too ;D
Every time you transfer from one container to another, you're losing some. Even with your hexane wash, which is superfluous by the way and at $200 a litre, completely unnecessary. Your yield was probably lower than it should have been due to this. Also, if you can avoid boiling your starting material in the heating vessel and instead passing steam through your material in an entirely separate vessel, your recovery will be better. I would also distill any batch for a minimum of 3hrs, as I've noticed it takes time for cellular membranes to rupture and release their goods. I've noticed a substantial increase of distillate towards the last 45 min or so of that 3 hrs, so maybe you also didn't run your setup long enough.
This is not steam distillation, this is hydrodistillation. In steam distillation biomass(here lemon) should not be directly in boiling water but rather above it so steam passes through it, drags the essential oil with it. In hydrodistillation they boil together like it is shown in the video. Note: I am a pharmacy student. And a great video by the way!
i have never seen on youtube a quality video like this one , may god bless you and reward you more success , my question : is thete any other way to separate oil from water rather than solvent as i think solvent can affect quality and also the need to heat solvent and oil can effect it too , what is your comments plz
Hey thank you! I trully preciate it thanks. I am working in incoming chemistry videos ;) It can be separated without solvent of course. I used it because it is only a little quantity of it and it is hard to separate it without a smaller separatory funnel but yeah, you can use a graduated cylinder and a Pasteur pippete to separate the oil from water, for example. Using more quantities of lemon peels will give you more oil and that makes the separation easier too. Normally in chemistry its more difficult to "play" with smaller quantities. Thank you for comenting!! NOOH
thanks dear sir hope you can make for us more video about the sepration of natural elements from plants , returning always to the second part of question does solvent effect the quaiity of essential oil even little abit good countinue and thanks alot
Well, there is always risk when using solvents, so yes it can contain traces of hexane in my case. I will not use it except for having and smelling it so the risk is minimum but if you plan to use it in a perfume or something its better not to use solvents. An alternative for hexane could be heptane wich is not as dangerous as hexane. Anyway the amount of solvent is so low that the risk is minimum or null but, as always in this world, if you plan to use it you have to do at your own risk.
By the way, traces of solvent doesnt really affect the final smell and carachteristics of the oil. Maybe as you said heating it can affect the compounds it has but, it has been heated when it is co-distilled with water at 100C so... Heating at hexane boiling point will not affect much more.
Nation Of Our Hobbies yes thanks alot o solvent can leave its toxic traces into the essential oil hope also to know if solvent can take of some nutrient value from the oil ; beside i hope that you can also talk about the degree of heating you need to apply and how to keep it satble ects ...i mean do steam extraction need srable heat or variant one and how do we need what each kind of oil nead such dgree of heating ragards
Why not use the hexane to rinse out your receiving flask before pouring into the sep-funnel? Could help with losses. Looks like the water rinses don't do much. Excellent video, thanks. Going to try this soon.
Well that rinsing with water was more mechanical. By shaking it vigorously the oil remaining breaks into smaller drops which are then pulled by the water. If you are still interested, watch my latest version of this video, you wont be dissapointed!
In fact is a really good question¡¡¡ The oil is composed of a large ammount of different compounds. It is as simple as the compounds which gives the lemon its colour is not co-distilled with the steam during the process. I asume that those compounds or pigments are in majority carothenes and xanthophylls. They size and weight are too large for that, they aren`t volatile, so they are not codistilled with this technique. Thanks for the question¡ :D
Hi¡¡ Well normally seed are used to extract their lipidic fraction (vegetable oils and fats) and contain little to no essential oil. Steam distillation is not usefull to extract this kind of compounds but extraction does¡¡ Fortunately, I have a video extracting the oil from walnuts. The method can be carried out for other seed in high content fo fats like sesame or sunflower. Check it out, I hope you enjoy it, because I there use a specific type of apparatus, which I love :D ruclips.net/video/oh_Lb0Lne9s/видео.html
Hi. Good to know new scientists come to see my videos!! I am preparing a video for the upcoming 10k subs explaining all of this, because that is question I receive a lot. I could just decant the oil phase using a pipete or something. I used hexane to try to get ALL of the oil that could remain in the glassware inner walls. As I am working with very small quantities, small loses represent high loses in yield so, just because I have Hexane around and I could, I used it haha. As simple as that... Later I saw that it is not quite common in the essential oil world but, me as a chemist... It is daily task, so implanted in a chemist mind that I didnt think about in that moment, as I improvise all of my videos. Thanks for commenting!
Yeah sorry for that, here in Spain we call them "refrigerantes" so the easy translation was that. I knew they were call diferent in english but at the time of editing the video I just didnt realised
gotta say I loved this video, your time lapse of you setting up the apparatus was really cool and watching the distillate travel through the condenser was also a great shot. Plus the sound of the waves in the background haha
In fact EO are quite expensive in the market. But think this is done in an amateur way, just to get a few grams of oil, I dont "need" more. I just did it to perform it and show you how I do it.
Y3sh just by decanting it. I used hexane because of the small ammount I was workong with. In huge extractors a little bit of essential oil thta remains in the funnel will not affect the yield as much as in small scale like mine
Hi, I tried the steam distillation with lemon skin yesterday(like your video but the apparatus set up are kinda different and I did not do the liquid-liquid extraction). The solution is get is transparent in color but slightly, very slightly cloudy. It has a lemon smell and it smell very great and fresh. Does the solution contain lemon oil and limonene? Sorry if my English is bad.
The distillate. I carried out the experiment just until the distillation without carrying further separation or liquid-liquid extraction. The distillate appears to be a little cloudy and there isn't any trace of oil on the surface. I was wondering if it contains limonene or essential oil for at least the slightest amount?
Well, it is very rare that you get cloudy distillite with lemons. Usually with lemon distillation you should get two totally inmiscible phases. It is cloudy because your essential oil is in the form of very tiny droplets. If you let it stand for a while they should merge and appear as a floating liquid. And yes of course, you have essentiak oil and for sure it contains limonene. If you cant see any phase appear you have a very little ammount and ti reciver that, you will probably have to use L-L extraction, because you will not be able to perform a decantation.
@@Glattuh my word for today, google: inmiscible- miscibility is the property of two substances to mix in all proportions, forming a homogeneous solution.
His distillate should be emptying straight into a separation funnel as it would allow for the immediate separation of essential oils from hydrosol and no need for hexane
+syoma fukasaku I dont really know. Essential oils are inmiscible with water but the flavour will be there. Flowers tipically have very low yielda for extraction but it can ve steamdistilled aswelk. By the way if you are planing to drink it dont use solvents for the extraction.
Judging by the light on the video probably a lot, but how many hours you were distiling the peels? The rate of watts to oil must be quite high, making it somewhat expensive method? Wouldn't have been more efficient to use a peeler and then chop the skin inside the flask with some kitchen devise, in order to avoid having some of the oils lost in the scratching?
+nicolashrv Yeah, it is not the cheap method, but im not a EOils industrial producer ;). I can not remember how many hours did I use to distill it but maybe 2 or 2:30. And ys someone told me I could use a peeler once, and thats right but I didnt have one by thetime I make this video. Thanks for commenting!
Hello. I'm an incoming 10th grader and our investigatory project is all about disintegrating styrofoam using lemons. Can the oil extracted from the lemon be able to somewhat decompose the styrofoam? if not, are there any other parts of the lemon that can possibly be acidic enough to disintegrate the styrofoam?
Hi!!! Well. The dissintigration of styrofoam is only a break of its structure and not a reaction with acid or bases. It is commonly demostrated by adding acetone (wich is a nonprotic polar organic solvent) to styrofoam (expanded polistyrene) as it breaks the structure of stryrofoam releasing the air bubbles in it and making it colapse into a paste. I think it could work with lemon oil because it has limonene, wich is actually sold in labs as an organic solvent. What is really important to predict the results is looking PS and solvent polarities. So yes I think it could "dissolve" styrofoam. Anyway, I think there is no other organic compound in lemon that could "dissolve" PS.
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This is fantastic. Really interesting see exactly how essential oil is made. As a typical lay customer of essential oils, it makes me really appreciate the number of steps involved in extracting just a few millilitres of oil. Nice work, my friend.
Thank!!! If you likes the video go check it my latest version. Much better and recent ;)
Step 1: Buy a chemistry lab
Step 2: Hire a chemist to supervise you at the beginning ;-)
Maybe when you buy the pack too, because you'll need for sure something that is not there!
Anyway, i enjoyed all the video!
😂😂😂
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There used to be a place called Edmunds Scientific Company in New Jersey but I have no clue at all as to what they have been doing because the last time I bought anything from them was maybe around 1996 ...?
step 2: FBI well help you to do chemical reactions 👌
I imagine the Christmas presents from this person are pretty interesting.
The experimental process was absolutely fantastic! The precision and accuracy were truly impressive.
Thank you for sharing without making a noise or music and not talking to much u get straight to the point
Thanks!! Watch my latest video, it is even better!
I dont always make essential oils but when I do, I do it by the seaside lab.... just teasing - thanks for the tutorial. I have an essential oil distiller that works fine, but love how you showed just how much essential oils you actually receive after all that plant materials. Great video.
I hope I live by the sea shore tooo haha. Well citrus essential oils are quite yieldy, I mean, lemon peel has a lot of it compared to other essential oils. If you like the video I invite you to watch my latest one about the same topic, much better than this one :D
The collected water that condensed is Lemon Hydrosol which is used in many cosmetic products as well - dont throw that away, as it contains trace amounts of the lemon oil as well. (This is true of all hydrosols)
Yeah, I didn't think that was oil. I actually did this with oranges, just to do it, and what I got would evaporate completely, no residue at all. Not really like oil.
I know this video is a few years old but I have a few comments on the extraction: You should use a smaller amount of water or a larger separatory funnel, the total volume of liquid is way too much for that size of container. It will also allow you to shake the separatory funnel much harder, giving you a better extraction result per run. Another thing is that you should use at least a quarter of the volume of the aqueuos phase per run. So you would add 100 mL of solvent (hexane) to 400 mL of aqueous phase. You're using way less than would be standard practice. Using a larger amount of solvent will also allow you to lose two or three drops w/o dropping your yield too much, so that your combined organic layers will contain much less water. You should also perform at least three rounds of extraction, this is due to Nernst's distribution law: Use little (not too little) amount of solvent per round and do more rounds; doing it three times with 50 mL will be better than doing it once with 150 mL.
If you can get your hands on it, try using DCM or ethyl acetate if the latter dissolves limonene sufficiently I'm not sure. DCM is much easier to get rid of than the hexane; ethyl acetate is way less harmful than both of those. I also would suggest using funnels to transfer liquids.
Secondly, since I'm only now watching the full video: You should use an oil bath to boil the water! Never place a flask directly onto the heating plate since this will cause a great deal of thermal stress in the glass because the heat distribution is very uneven. Thermal stress in glass means that it can break, as I'm sure you know. So you could use some mineral oil or vegetable oil (obv. easier to obtain) with a high smoke point and heat that up to about 120 °C so the inside of your vessel will reach 100 °C.
Source: Working on my Master's in Chemistry.
Peter, those flasks used to be made of quartz and you could safely place them on hot surfaces.
It is such a great video! very detailed and with useful descriptions at each step, excellent job thank you! Just a comment: title says "Steam distillation" but, according to what I've found in literature this is a "water distillaion" as a "steam distillation" has to have 2 flasks: a first flask to contain the water that will produce steam, then steam will enter in a second flask to then pass through the condensator and so on...
Great video. The ocean waves as your background sound is a very special and enjoyable addition. Thanks for taking the time to create and post this.
Thank you for watching!! Seems like even that sound I got from one of this videos on YT that longs 1 hour has copyright to it... I will probably have to record my own sea sound or even synthetise it... Whatch my other chemistry videos if you want!!!!
The ocean sound was annoying why not talking instead it will be better.
When like gives you lemons, make essential oil.
thanks for not putting music, it makes it so much nicer to watch
You can also use some drying agents like CaSO4 to get rid of the water left behind.
I enjoyed watching this video it was nice to see how the process is done and the white noise was a great addition.
You make science seem effortless .Great video and thank you .
Thank you! I would appreciate if you watch my latest video about the same topic, you wont be dissapointed! ruclips.net/video/NlgZACkf3Q4/видео.html&t
By 0:30 I've already paused this video to give it a thumbs-up because I'm impressed you're grating a lemon using the blind side of a box grater and haven't drawn blood.
No one were injured during the fliming process of the video yeah hahaa Thanks for the like and comment¡¡
@@Glattuhyes but to ensure a good run we had to appease the god of citrus by making the blood sacrifice of our family dog
Thank you. It reminded me my analytical and organic chemistry classes, here in Costa Rica.
Super good video!!!!! Simple, explained with detail and no annoying music!
Thank you for watching and commenting!!!
After 11 minutes I have little understanding of the events but man, I enjoyed it !
this was a VERY well shot and edited video, the background white noise was very nice as well
I think he lives next to the beach.
The moment the technology is able to reproduce the sense of smell when you watch a video, I think you will be pleased that I uploaded that :D I can tell you its poisonus (which, far away from fiction, the oil is skin and eye irritant and toxic by ingestion) is balanced with the good smell it has. It is just like lemon (ofc) but very, veeeeery, concentrated (like having 4 lemons in a vial maybe??)
@@Glattuh but you used the skin from 4 lemons, which is less the 4 whole lemons
I never knew that one needs to connect the water inlet to the condenser in the opposite direction of the vapor flow. I'm sure glad I picked that up while watching your video. Thanks for that tip.
Yes always like this! The idea is to get heat out as soon as possible :D- This video is old, check this one better ruclips.net/video/NlgZACkf3Q4/видео.html&ab_channel=NationOfOurHobbies
I have so much more appreciation for essential oils. The amount of product produced is. No where near the amount of product used
This video is extremely well done, thorough while still concise. The soothing sounds are also a nice touch
Thank you! I invite you to watch my latest video in the channel: same topic, muuuuch better :D
your house must smell so good after doing this :D
It did yes¡¡¡ What it is also interesting is that the water distilled, where the oil forms a phase above it, does not smell that good. It has some kind of smell like if you boil lemon juice and then drink it (it is difficult to explain, and more in not my language :D )
Check out my other lavender oil extraction :)
@@Glattuh it called hidrosole, used by the industry..
Nation Of Our Hobbies instead of phase I think you want to use the word “layer”
Was that a fly swirling around in the mixture🤔🧐🤨😁🐜
Yeah but those hexane vapours..
Ya sé lo que tengo que hacer ¡gracias! Me preguntaba que hacía tan relajante este video, las olas del mar que pocos notan.
We all notice the waves.... but do not generally comment because we are all envious and want to live by the sea, also.
Great video!
Yes it has become my own style since the begining of my channel. Now I cant imagine doing a video without that. If you liked this video go check my new lemon essential oil one. The sound of the waves that you hear there has been recorded by me hehe
sure wish i could do this stuff. but i live in Texas, where chemistry is illegal and glassware requires permits and 60-90 days approval waiting and rejection, then submission to random police inspections for the durration of ownership of the glassware. but i can go buy a gun and 1000 rounds of ammo and be out the door after a 15 minute background check (i know this from experience, ive done it 6 times) #logic!
is this trolling or is this actual reality?
Sounds like bs to me, I can open a catalogue and order whatever kab equipment I want and have it delivered to my door lol....
Actually there are certain items that will be flagged and tracked when not purchased by a school or lab in some areas. Just like limiting the amount of cold medicine and pesticides you can purchase. It helps to cut down amateur ‘I’m gonna be a drug lord’ basement enterprises.
So if you aren’t selling or gifting essential oil products that you have made and you’ve purchased a crap ton of equipment, you may get a visit to see what’s up.
Due to meth
Welcome to the UK where we only legalise something if it can be taxed.
It wasn't until 1:37 that I realized I wasn't going to be able to do this at home😭😭😭😭
....What were you expecting? To just squeeze a lemon? You can still totally buy this and do it from home too. Lmao
Okaaaa!!! lol!
@@aitotem it was a joke..don't get your panties in a bunch sheesh
Get a distilling pot, and a micropipette. After distilling just take the organic layer off the top of the product and you should be good.
amazing! now i understand why essential oils are expensive! either by hand or machines, it is a complex process :D salute to all chemists in the oil industry!
Love to watch it with the ocean sounds
I will not complain about the price of essential oils again... Thank you for sharing💚
Thanks for commenting! Yeah they are worth the price hehe
Thank for making me understand this steam distillation which I was not understanding in my chemistry ncert
I collect fragrances and I have a few by Christian Dior. I’ve read that Dior has their own gardens and they use pure essential oils for their perfumes. They are more expensive, now I know why.
The ocean sounds are.....wonderful
Thanks¡¡ What do you think about using thunder and rain in incoming aquarium videos (dunno if you are interested in that but... anyways :D)
As a 2nd year biobased chemist I was wondering why you added the hexane to dissolve the oil. Oil is insoluble in water so 2 layers would already be formed therefore the L/L-extraction step would be unnecessary in my perspective. I can imagine using hexane for getting a higher yield of final product by washing the aqueous layer with it but the amount of extra oil seemed to be marginal. Am I right?
Yes you are completely right. I used hexane not to extract more oil from the water phase, because as you said, it s insoluble in it, but to wash the remaining that could be in the funnel after draining it. As you see Im working with very small ammounts of oil so every loss will affect a lot in my yield. If I extract more peels and get much more oil I probably would not use hexane, as it is easy to seprate two well differenced and significant ammounts of liquid phases. I wash the aqueos phase several times. That is done both to wash the possible reamining oil in the water and to wash the funnel itself.
Im not using the oil for any application already so using hexane was not an issue
Seems like every coment from here is about using or not using hexane D:. Many people ask me that. Ill give you upvote for the comment so it should be on top. I hope people read this comment before asking me the same question again haha.
Anyway thanks for commenting :D Check out my other videos tooo :)
I see, now I understand. Indeed when the oil isn't used for any health purposes, then hexane can be used as a solvent. However, a comparable solvent like pentane or maybe even better; heptane should do the job as well without risking neurotoxic poisoning.
Yeah I know that too. I could not find pentane or heptane where I buy my other stuff. Appreciate the comment :D
i was wondering the same thing. thanks for asking. i dont mind using hexane but i rather not unless im in a room designed for it haha
lol same question. found my answer in the very first comment.
You can dry the organic phase with anhydrous sodium or magnesium sulfate and filtrate to eliminate this water contamination at the end. For this, I also recommend to use a little bit more hexane...
Que buen video. A pesar de que no entiendo nada de química y poco de inglés me resultó muy interesante... No sé cómo llegué hasta acá, estaba buscando sobre cómo hacer perfumes caseros sin comprar esencias prefabricadas y me topé con esto pero creo que... Me fui un poco al otro extremo de complejidad jeje. Igualmente ojalá tuviera ese equipo de laboratorio como para animarme a intentarlo y aprender más del tema. Note que hablas español leyendo los comentarios y por el "limón (hexnosequé)" que anotaste en el frasco contenedor. Gracias por el video y tu dedicación
Muchas gracias!!! En mi opinión cualquiera puede hacer lo que yo he hecho aquí, incluso sin el uso de disolventes orgánicos, para cosas como elaboración de perfumes y jabones. En internet hay infinidad de paginas que venden este tipo de aparatos, si estas interesado, puedes empezar por eBay ;D
Un saludo y gracias por el comentario!!!
this is really cool . I like how he didn't even use a heating mantle. This is very smart and simplified.
The fractionation part has some shortcomings. First of all you should not boil the hexane+oil mixture because while doing so some oil would definitely have escaped and Secondly, you should have used Activated Anhydrous Sodium Sulphate or Sodium Chloride to remove water from the essential oil.
No chemicals please
This was much needed process I've been looking for so long! Was so confused on distillation of lemon. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, glad to hear you found what you were looking for. Stay tuned to my channel, I will probably reupload the same video but using a much bigger essential oil distiller :D
@@Glattuh Will definitely look forward to it!
@@girlwithnoname0 cardamom how
@@Glattuh cardamom how
The first time I saw this video with all that chemistry tools, I thought it was complicated. Now I know there is a much simple way to do it with basic kitchen stuff.
It is actually hydro-distillation, others are excellent.
the tip with the cut rubber ball is nice, I, like probably others, always have problems with some Quickfit adapters, apart from the particularly expensive ones with PTFA seals
I came here to learn about the distillation process and I guess I did with a little aesthetic haha
Thanks! If you liked it, watch my latest video, its a version II from this one :D
This is how mainly essential oils are made. Indeed, industry scale essential oils are distilled continuously. Thus, the solvent extraction step is redundant.
Since (purely) solvent extration is another common method to extract fragrances, the products are called 'absolute' instead of 'essence oil'.
There are two types of distillation. This video demonstrates water distillation where the raw naterial is soaked in the water. Another one is steam distillation, which is more common, places the raw material on a mesh or any holed container upon a pool of steaming water, and the steam goes through the raw material to extract the fragrances.
There is a disadvantage of distillations. There are always more than traces of fragrance dissolved in water. Thus, fragrances of essential oil are often described as 'incomplete' compared with absolutes.
The remaining water is not discarded. It calls 'hydrosol', while itself is also somewhat fragrant and is also used in purfumery. Some hydrosols (i.e. rose) can have strong fragrance enough to replace essential oils in some applications.
P.S. but there is a bit of epic fail as you use lemon peel for this demonstration. Citrus fruits peel oils are usually extracted by cold pressing without any distillations.
But you yet do a good demonstration about distillation❤
I only came here because i didn't wanna leave my house to buy something, but this is way more interesting!
So youtube algorithms are not so bad haha. Thanks for watching me! If you liked it watch my latest video about lemons too :D You wont be disappointed
Oh the irony
@@tsacheck1601 i cant even remember what i was gonna buy
Never seen one of these videos with the hexane step. very cool.
I miss organic chemistry class 💕
The background sound sounded like it was raining and I loved it!😊
All my chem videos have it! If you want check put my other vids ;D
Really interesting to watch but so much work I will continue to buy it, worth it!
You made great effort to make the video. As far as i know cold-press extraction is the one used to extract citrus essential oils. Using hexane which is very toxic makes the extracted oil dangerous for human use. Thank you for uploading though.
Thanks for watching! I used hexane here to recover all the EO that could remain stuck to the glassware while working, but of course, that is not necessary. In fact I demonstrated that in my last video, check it out here, I am sure you will enjoy it ;)
ruclips.net/video/NlgZACkf3Q4/видео.html
@@Glattuh Thanks for replying ! I understand you made choices based on what you need the EO for and what you have available. I will make sure to watch your last video. Keep up the hard work :)
Nice video though,
I think its a good tip if you can peel the zest without getting pith(white color portion). I did it by peeling in thin slices using a slicer and cutting the orange peels to small sizes with a scissor as necessary. Although, my other group got no oil from distill as they peel the orange in large size with the pith.
I'm not sure if the normal yield of 4% possible for limonene. I got 2.33% on mine. There was a lot of oil left in the separatory funnel and using the hexane would have help getting a higher yield as water is polar and hexane with oil is non-polar, which in my case, my lab class did not provide us hexane. Also, we used a long-stemmed pipet to draw the oil from water in the separatory funnel and there was no water on the end product as per the IR-spectrum.
Thanks for the comment¡ It feels weird that you didnt get any oil in that batch (with all the peel involved). Citrics give oils with no problem in my experience. I have also tried it with orange, tangerine and grapefruit and they all gave me nice and smelly oils¡
Also, good to know that the oil does not contain any water by IR analysis, I wish I could do some of that inmy channel someday ;D
Nation Of Our Hobbies wow I didn't expect a reply, thank you for reading my comment!!
It was actually weird that my other group did not get any oil, so we and our instructor assume that it was due to the large orange peels with the thick pith. I haven't actually tried with tangerine, grapefruit, its good to know they gave oil. Also, in our other experiments, when using fractional distills, we used aluminum foil to cover around the fractionating column. Hopefully, you will post more videos of your experiments :O
So we can asume raw material has to be treated before extracting the oil, I will keep that in mind in my next essential oil video. Maybe by reducing it size in a blender before adding it to the extraction flask? I think that is a good idea if the blender can be washed several times with water so little oil remain in the walls of it
Talking about other thing, may I ask what are you studying? I am just curious ;D
And yes, I have a lot of incoming projects to film in my channel. Hope I can begin by the next year, because I have a surprise that will boost the channelm (Cant talk more about it hehe) ;D
@@Glattuh Yep you are right! Also, that's a good idea to reduce the raw material size.
I am actually studying to become a biochemist in CA and a 2nd-year student. The distillation experiment is one of our Ochem labs, so yeah.
However, can wait to see your new projects! Best of Luck! :O
Considering I just watched a chick make lilac Essential oil using a strainer, cheese cloth, a bowl, and a pan(the only things unusual being the grapeseed oil and the cheese cloth), it doesn't really require nearly this amount of gear unless you want high purity stuff which will need diluting afterwards anyways.
totally cool! that lemon oil extraction must have smelled fantastic! you've got v.good o-chem lab skills. i hope your future includes finding how how are chem can take you (or how far you can take it) -sc3dacity
God bless all the chemist without you,we dont have any medicine soaps perfumes and etc..
Thanks for the appreciation¡
yeah, and all that crazy etc stuff
Interesting, I love essential oils so it’s good to know the process. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏾
I learned a lot, thank you. This was extremely theraputic to watch.
Very good distillation process! Can you provide breakdown identifying each piece of apparatus used and size?
Of course¡¡ I bought it as a pack, including a Vigreux column, wich has not beeing saw in any of my videos yet.
Check it out: www.labbox.com/en/products/F0400/x450/APP4/
All joints are 29/32
- 500ml flat bottomed flask (From other pack. Distillation pack was meant attacj to 250ml round bottomed flask)
- Liebig-West refrigerator, 250mm
- Collector, distillation and thermometer adapters
- POM clamps
- Tipical metalware. I built the stand by myself using plaster and steel rod
Thanks for commenting¡¡¡ Check out my other videos too ;D
Every time you transfer from one container to another, you're losing some. Even with your hexane wash, which is superfluous by the way and at $200 a litre, completely unnecessary. Your yield was probably lower than it should have been due to this. Also, if you can avoid boiling your starting material in the heating vessel and instead passing steam through your material in an entirely separate vessel, your recovery will be better. I would also distill any batch for a minimum of 3hrs, as I've noticed it takes time for cellular membranes to rupture and release their goods. I've noticed a substantial increase of distillate towards the last 45 min or so of that 3 hrs, so maybe you also didn't run your setup long enough.
Is your lab by the beach ?
This is not steam distillation, this is hydrodistillation. In steam distillation biomass(here lemon) should not be directly in boiling water but rather above it so steam passes through it, drags the essential oil with it. In hydrodistillation they boil together like it is shown in the video.
Note: I am a pharmacy student. And a great video by the way!
Yeah I get told about this a lot. If you like it, watch my latest video about the same topic and if you can, read its description :D
i have never seen on youtube a quality video like this one , may god bless you and reward you more success , my question :
is thete any other way to separate oil from water rather than solvent as i think solvent can affect quality and also the need to heat solvent and oil can effect it too , what is your comments plz
Hey thank you! I trully preciate it thanks. I am working in incoming chemistry videos ;)
It can be separated without solvent of course. I used it because it is only a little quantity of it and it is hard to separate it without a smaller separatory funnel but yeah, you can use a graduated cylinder and a Pasteur pippete to separate the oil from water, for example. Using more quantities of lemon peels will give you more oil and that makes the separation easier too. Normally in chemistry its more difficult to "play" with smaller quantities.
Thank you for comenting!!
NOOH
thanks dear sir hope you can make for us more video about the sepration of natural elements from plants , returning always to the second part of question does solvent effect the quaiity of essential oil even little abit
good countinue and thanks alot
Well, there is always risk when using solvents, so yes it can contain traces of hexane in my case. I will not use it except for having and smelling it so the risk is minimum but if you plan to use it in a perfume or something its better not to use solvents. An alternative for hexane could be heptane wich is not as dangerous as hexane. Anyway the amount of solvent is so low that the risk is minimum or null but, as always in this world, if you plan to use it you have to do at your own risk.
By the way, traces of solvent doesnt really affect the final smell and carachteristics of the oil. Maybe as you said heating it can affect the compounds it has but, it has been heated when it is co-distilled with water at 100C so... Heating at hexane boiling point will not affect much more.
Nation Of Our Hobbies yes thanks alot o solvent can leave its toxic traces into the essential oil hope also to know if solvent can take of some nutrient value from the oil ; beside i hope that you can also talk about the degree of heating you need to apply and how to keep it satble ects ...i mean do steam extraction need srable heat or variant one and how do we need what each kind of oil nead such dgree of heating
ragards
Add some of the lemon oil to olive oil and then use with buttered parmesan noodles. Blows the flavor through the roof.
I never had problems ordering lab glassware !📈 science RULES ! 🔬📚🔭📡
Why not use the hexane to rinse out your receiving flask before pouring into the sep-funnel? Could help with losses. Looks like the water rinses don't do much. Excellent video, thanks. Going to try this soon.
Well that rinsing with water was more mechanical. By shaking it vigorously the oil remaining breaks into smaller drops which are then pulled by the water. If you are still interested, watch my latest version of this video, you wont be dissapointed!
This might seam a stupid question but why is the lemon essential oil clear and not yellow?
In fact is a really good question¡¡¡
The oil is composed of a large ammount of different compounds. It is as simple as the compounds which gives the lemon its colour is not co-distilled with the steam during the process. I asume that those compounds or pigments are in majority carothenes and xanthophylls. They size and weight are too large for that, they aren`t volatile, so they are not codistilled with this technique.
Thanks for the question¡ :D
Nation Of Our Hobbies thank you for your swift reply. And that explains a lot thank you 😊
Cold-pressed lemon oil is yellow, if you've seen that somewhere and wondering what that yellow lemon oil was.
This is a super patient reply. I'm glad that you are entertaining "stupid questions".
Magic of chemistry! 👍👍👍
Amazing.I wanted to know if we can use this method for the seeds. If no, what is the best method for extraction of oil/essential oil from seeds?
Hi¡¡ Well normally seed are used to extract their lipidic fraction (vegetable oils and fats) and contain little to no essential oil. Steam distillation is not usefull to extract this kind of compounds but extraction does¡¡ Fortunately, I have a video extracting the oil from walnuts. The method can be carried out for other seed in high content fo fats like sesame or sunflower. Check it out, I hope you enjoy it, because I there use a specific type of apparatus, which I love :D
ruclips.net/video/oh_Lb0Lne9s/видео.html
so calm and informative. Thank you.
Thank you for watching!!! ;)
I am new pharmaceutical student here... Thanks for the video... But why hexane ? And it will apply to other stuff To?
Hi. Good to know new scientists come to see my videos!! I am preparing a video for the upcoming 10k subs explaining all of this, because that is question I receive a lot. I could just decant the oil phase using a pipete or something. I used hexane to try to get ALL of the oil that could remain in the glassware inner walls. As I am working with very small quantities, small loses represent high loses in yield so, just because I have Hexane around and I could, I used it haha. As simple as that... Later I saw that it is not quite common in the essential oil world but, me as a chemist... It is daily task, so implanted in a chemist mind that I didnt think about in that moment, as I improvise all of my videos.
Thanks for commenting!
I will subscribe your channel ... ☺️
Took me a few minutes to realize you weren't at the ocean. Definitely the best background sounds
No no, we are at the ocean. it's right outside.
I've never heard a condenser called a "refrigerator" before. It took me a second to figure out what you were referring to.
Yeah sorry for that, here in Spain we call them "refrigerantes" so the easy translation was that. I knew they were call diferent in english but at the time of editing the video I just didnt realised
Loving that ocean sound.
Damn nice work. I can see myself trying this and blowing up my house lol
so intrigued by the sound of waves in the background
gotta say I loved this video, your time lapse of you setting up the apparatus was really cool and watching the distillate travel through the condenser was also a great shot. Plus the sound of the waves in the background haha
Thank you man¡¡ I like when people liking it :D Check out my other videos too, maybe you find something interesting ;)
Amazing video!! It helped me a lot with information about steam distillation, thank you!
Essential oil must be liquid gold if the cost of 2 hours of electrical heat and time pissing around is worth it for a few ml of oil.
In fact EO are quite expensive in the market. But think this is done in an amateur way, just to get a few grams of oil, I dont "need" more. I just did it to perform it and show you how I do it.
Cost about $10 per ml if high grade
well a good work, nicely done without a hurry 💙
i always wondered how fragrance was extracted from plants. İs there a way to extract it without hexane?
Y3sh just by decanting it. I used hexane because of the small ammount I was workong with. In huge extractors a little bit of essential oil thta remains in the funnel will not affect the yield as much as in small scale like mine
Awesome video! I used the peel of a lime. No wonder I only got some specs!!!
Thanks! If you like it watch my new one!!! I did not trully understand you... what you mean about some specs?
@@Glattuh oh, I got like tiny spots of oil on my round bottomed flask. I almost got nothing
I like this ASMR video!
Thumb up!! Very informative and detailed video for someone like me. Also shot very well and well editing as well. Thank you!!
Hi and thank you!! If you have time you better watch my latest video aboyt the same topic, much better ;)
muy interesante, gracias por compartirlo
Muchas gracias a ti por verlo ;)
Loved every minute of it.
Thank you!!! Watch my latest video, maybe you enjoy it even more ;)
Hi, I tried the steam distillation with lemon skin yesterday(like your video but the apparatus set up are kinda different and I did not do the liquid-liquid extraction). The solution is get is transparent in color but slightly, very slightly cloudy. It has a lemon smell and it smell very great and fresh. Does the solution contain lemon oil and limonene? Sorry if my English is bad.
HI¡
When you say solution you mean the oil, already separated or decanted from the aquaeos solution or you mean the distillate (water+oil)??
The distillate. I carried out the experiment just until the distillation without carrying further separation or liquid-liquid extraction. The distillate appears to be a little cloudy and there isn't any trace of oil on the surface. I was wondering if it contains limonene or essential oil for at least the slightest amount?
Well, it is very rare that you get cloudy distillite with lemons. Usually with lemon distillation you should get two totally inmiscible phases. It is cloudy because your essential oil is in the form of very tiny droplets. If you let it stand for a while they should merge and appear as a floating liquid. And yes of course, you have essentiak oil and for sure it contains limonene.
If you cant see any phase appear you have a very little ammount and ti reciver that, you will probably have to use L-L extraction, because you will not be able to perform a decantation.
@@Glattuh my word for today, google: inmiscible- miscibility is the property of two substances to mix in all proportions, forming a homogeneous solution.
His distillate should be emptying straight into a separation funnel as it would allow for the immediate separation of essential oils from hydrosol and no need for hexane
Incredible! amazing!
So complicated but lemon oil is Lovely
😂 no pues wow muy equipado el amigo 😂 ya estuvo que li hice !😂😂😂
Super clear explanation!!
Please tell me, How did you measure the final percentage of lemonene oil?
I am considering to make durian essential oil.
Nice! I didnt hear about that fruit, let me know about your results :D
Is it possible to make an infusion type of essenstial oil? lets say 4 different flowers?
+syoma fukasaku I dont really know. Essential oils are inmiscible with water but the flavour will be there. Flowers tipically have very low yielda for extraction but it can ve steamdistilled aswelk. By the way if you are planing to drink it dont use solvents for the extraction.
Nation Of Our Hobbies I want to make my own soaps
syoma fukasaku Durian soap? 😂
I really learned from this video surely will try, thanks for sharing
Thank you for watching! If you liked it go ahead and watch my newset version of this video
Judging by the light on the video probably a lot, but how many hours you were distiling the peels?
The rate of watts to oil must be quite high, making it somewhat expensive method?
Wouldn't have been more efficient to use a peeler and then chop the skin inside the flask with some kitchen devise, in order to avoid having some of the oils lost in the scratching?
+nicolashrv Yeah, it is not the cheap method, but im not a EOils industrial producer ;). I can not remember how many hours did I use to distill it but maybe 2 or 2:30. And ys someone told me I could use a peeler once, and thats right but I didnt have one by thetime I make this video.
Thanks for commenting!
Not really, I have tried it.
When you recover something from a sep funnel after draining aqueous phase, you should pour the other liquid out of the top.
That may help with the water contamination :)
When life hands you lemons, make lemonine?
Absolutely ;)
You go ahead, go ahead and go, it's not a video for unlicensed critics.
Hello. I'm an incoming 10th grader and our investigatory project is all about disintegrating styrofoam using lemons. Can the oil extracted from the lemon be able to somewhat decompose the styrofoam? if not, are there any other parts of the lemon that can possibly be acidic enough to disintegrate the styrofoam?
Hi!!! Well. The dissintigration of styrofoam is only a break of its structure and not a reaction with acid or bases. It is commonly demostrated by adding acetone (wich is a nonprotic polar organic solvent) to styrofoam (expanded polistyrene) as it breaks the structure of stryrofoam releasing the air bubbles in it and making it colapse into a paste. I think it could work with lemon oil because it has limonene, wich is actually sold in labs as an organic solvent. What is really important to predict the results is looking PS and solvent polarities.
So yes I think it could "dissolve" styrofoam. Anyway, I think there is no other organic compound in lemon that could "dissolve" PS.
Is this noise or waves 🌊 in the background? So calming
Yes! Its my style of making videos, all of them have it :D
you are putting little bits of micro plastic into your lemon zest by using that brush against a grater