SWID recently fractionally distilled 125mL of Parsley leaf oil, using a four inch column packed with stainless steel wool. His thermometer never gave accurate readings, due to its touching the wool for a portion of the distillation, and gaps in the mercury (that SWID swears wasn't there just a couple of weeks ago). As such, he used the temperature of the oil bath to divide the oil into the following four fractions.
1st - oil bath temp 25 to 70C.
collected 23mL, weighing 19.1g d0.83
A highly refractive liquid (tending towards blue refraction), completely clear, has a sharp smell. Very fluid liquid (seeming more fluid than water) even after 24h in the freezer.
2nd Fraction - oil bath temp 70-100C.
collected 12mL weighing 9.8g d0.82
Also clear, very refractive (almost pure blue refraction), sharp smell, slightly more viscous but also unaffected by refridgeration.
3rd Fraction - oil bath temp 100-130C
collected 21mL weighing 19.5g d0.93
yellow tinged more viscous liquid. refractive in wide full rainbows. sweeter smell than above, kinda parsleyish towards the sharp side. only slightly more viscous after 24h in freezer.
4th Fraction - oil temp bath 130-160C
collected 35mL weighing 25.5g d0.73(!?)
a light yellow oil, non-refractive, viscous and possessing a sweet agreeable parlsey odor. became more viscous on 24h in fridge, but not to the extent it became unpourable.
5th, undistilled fraction - ~10-20mL of a dark blood red opaque thick and viscous oil. odd smell reminiscent of all previous fractions.
In each case the oil bath was brought up to the maximum temp for the section (ie 70, 100, 130, 160) and held there until the mixture stopped boiling. It was heated with magnetic stirring, and a 1/3-hp vacuum pump factory rated at 20microns and 4cfm was used to provide vacuum to the tightly sealed rig. (This pump pulled benzyl chloride, bp 179, @ 55C, showing roughly ~7 torr, indicating that myristicin and apiole would theoretically distill between 130 and 145C.)
SWID is going to attempt to isomerize the fourth fraction, is this also a good method for analysis? (aka, does SWID have any myristicin or apiole in here?) Perhaps a wash with 6M NaOH at room temperature would be a good idea, to clean anything with a hydroxyl group out before isomerization.
Also, the densities don't make a lot of sense. What is the density of Apiole in oil form? of Myristicin?
SWID appreciates any comments or suggestions, except the ones containing "should redistill", which he accepts only begrudgingly, since the last distillation took 10 freakin hours.