Hello friends,
Recently a friend of mine attempted to steam distill some sassafras rootbark he had to yield sassafras oil, only he made a mistake. The makeshift still he used to hold the rootbark, through which steam generated in the first vessel passed through, did not pass easily up the exit tube into the condenser. Upon observation, he told me he was witnessing reflux of the steam occuring, as the exit tune must have been to cold and the steam/oil dripped back into the bottom of the vessel containing the rootbark.
He cooled the vessel and collected the liquid at the bottom of the container an filtered it multiple times, but he still couldn't achieve the cleanliness that comes from steam distillation. He is sure theres oil in his mixture as well as water and very tiny debrie.
Well, my friend is not a great chemist and not a professional either but i knew for sure that diethyl ether is a great nonpolar solvent so i suggested to him to extract oil from the mixture with ether. Latest ive heard from him he had mixed the ether with the mixture in a seperatory funnel and plans to evap off the ether extracts to yield oil.
So i pose to you vesps a question of whether this is the best thing to do in this situation.
My friend would really like to recover his oil.
Thanks for any replies!
Recently a friend of mine attempted to steam distill some sassafras rootbark he had to yield sassafras oil, only he made a mistake. The makeshift still he used to hold the rootbark, through which steam generated in the first vessel passed through, did not pass easily up the exit tube into the condenser. Upon observation, he told me he was witnessing reflux of the steam occuring, as the exit tune must have been to cold and the steam/oil dripped back into the bottom of the vessel containing the rootbark.
He cooled the vessel and collected the liquid at the bottom of the container an filtered it multiple times, but he still couldn't achieve the cleanliness that comes from steam distillation. He is sure theres oil in his mixture as well as water and very tiny debrie. Well, my friend is not a great chemist and not a professional either but i knew for sure that diethyl ether is a great nonpolar solvent so i suggested to him to extract oil from the mixture with ether. Latest ive heard from him he had mixed the ether with the mixture in a seperatory funnel and plans to evap off the ether extracts to yield oil.
So i pose to you vesps a question of whether this is the best thing to do in this situation.
My friend would really like to recover his oil.
Thanks for any replies!
that thing looks sick!
