Author Topic: Extraction of safrole from sassafras oil  (Read 2992 times)

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claude

  • Guest
Extraction of safrole from sassafras oil
« on: July 16, 2004, 04:32:00 AM »
Hi, I'm new here, but I would like to have your opinion concerning the following procedure of safrole extraction :

In sassafras oil, we find in various proportions, depending on the oil's origin :

 - Safrole
 - Pinene
 - Phellandrene
 - Camphor
 - Eugenol

According to the CRC Handbook of Chemistry :

                    Water                 Ethanol

     Safrole      insoluble             very soluble
     Pinene       insoluble               soluble
   Phellandrene   insoluble              insoluble
     Camphor    slightly soluble        very soluble
     Eugenol    slightly soluble             ?

So, if the oil is first repeatedly washed with water, eugenol and camphor will be extracted from the oil. Then, if the oil if treated with ethanol, nearly all safrole and some pinene can be extracted, leaving the phellandrene.

Yes, the purity of safrole isn't perfect, there is residual pinene, but can this procedure be an alternative to freezing or distilling sassatras oil ? For those like me
:(  who doesn't have low pressure distillation material, and aren't lucky in fractionally freezing the oil.

And maybe a further crystallisation will work now, and achieve the purification of safrole ?


Nicodem

  • Guest
There is a thing called the partition coefficient
« Reply #1 on: July 16, 2004, 05:58:00 AM »
…and its value is not in favor of your proposal.

You should first ask yourself what "slightly soluble" means. You can't efficiently extract something that is much, much more soluble in non-polar solvents with water. Utmost you could extract eugenol with aqueous NaOH, but not camphor or anything else from your list.


armageddon

  • Guest
-
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2004, 02:27:00 PM »

ApprenticeCook

  • Guest
Dont know how much purer it seems to get it...
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2004, 03:01:00 AM »
Dont know how much purer it seems to get it but for piece of mind swim does this....

Freeze and extract safrole+whatever crystals (this is done 4 times) then distill and collect the safrole fraction bp, freeze again and then distilled again to collect the safrole fraction bp again.
For isomerisation in the high end conversion yields the safrole needs to be super pure, doing the above method gets iso conversion of 95-97% with no probs.

-AC


icexool

  • Guest
brazillian sassafras oil
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2004, 08:47:00 AM »
Today I went to a store and asked if they could order sassafras oil from china(I've heard that's 96% safrole)
Anyway they came up saying they did however could order brazillian sassafras oil.
It might be helpfull for others. I'm 99% sure this can be used since it contains that much safrole:

Botanic: ocotea pretiosa Nees
Family: lauraceae
Used part: Wood

Ingredients:
0,7% alpha-pineen
phellandreen
5% cadineen
0,6% eugenol
75-95% safrol
0,2% 1,8-cineol
1-4% kamfer
*source Franchomme et al., o.c

Sjankara

XrLeap

  • Guest
emm... simple distillation does not mess up...
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2004, 02:37:00 PM »
emm... simple distillation does not mess up the whole thing, just about 1 to 2 percent of polymerized crap that could be cleaned easily with acetone. just try it with simple distillation.:)