Friday, December 18, 2009

Does anyone know how to extract oil from olive leafs?

I have a few olive trees and I wish to know what the procedure of extraction for oil from olive leafs is achievedDoes anyone know how to extract oil from olive leafs?
The biggest drawbacks are going to be obtaining the chemicals and the machinery.





';There are many methods of essential oil extraction, the most popular being steam distillation. Other methods include expression, enfleurage, maceration, and solvent extraction.';





Heat can damage oils. That's why, years ago when people were extracting oil from the olive fruit ';cold pressed'; oils were considered the best. ';Fifty years ago when most oil was made in vertical presses, the paste was pressed to make olive oil (first press - see below) and then mixed with hot water or steam and pressed again to remove more oil. This ';second pressing'; was not as good; the heat had evaporated some of the delicate flavors';.





Excessively heating olive oil will evaporate the alcohols and esters which make up its delicate taste and fragrance. Heating olive oil will not change its health aspects, only the flavor.





Commercial solvents used are: ethanol; methanol; n-hexane; diethyl ether; and ethyl acetate. Ethanol is hard to get, because the government control of booze. Most of the other solvents are more toxic and/or carcinogenic, so all traces of these solvents would need to be removed.





';Traditional methods for isolating essential oils from plant materials, such as steam distillation and solvent extraction, have some drawbacks due to the heat instability of essential oil and the presence of residual organic solvent in the extract. Thus, the use of supercritical fluids for extraction of essential oils has received increasing attention as an alternative to these traditional techniques (Stahl et al., 1987). Supercritical carbon dioxide has such attractive properties (it is nontoxic, inexpensive, odorless, colorless, nonflammable and has near ambient critical temperature, low viscosity and high diffusivity compared to liquids) that it has become the preferred solvent in the processing natural materials (McHugh %26amp; Krukonis, 1994)';.

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