Essential Oil Distillers: Essential Oil Distillation Equipment

Extracting essential oil by the method of pressing, is an age-old practice; however, with the advent of technology, essential oil distillers have made it easy to extract oil from flowers, leaves, bark and roots of the plants. Besides distillation, solvent extraction is also used to procure essential oils. They have a long history of being used in medicine, cosmetics, household items and flavoring food.

Extracting essential oils requires a distillation process. Many companies use large, centralized equipment; however, for small-scale and home-based business, smaller decentralized distilling equipment are also available. The distiller is primarily made up of three components: a steam generator, a condenser, and a separator. A steam generator uses a heat source to boil water and generate steam. The steam, then passes through a small chamber, that holds the particular plant part, and extracts the oils by creating an oil-steam mixture. The condenser cools this mix, and condenses it into an oil-water mixture. Finally, the separator separates the essential oils from the water.

Types of Essential Oil Distillation and Distillers

Essential oil can be extracted using four kinds of essential oil distilling equipment, i.e. water distillation, steam distillation, dry steam distillation and solvent distillation. Some plants and herbs are just too delicate to handle steam distillation, and need water distillation process to get the right grade of essential oil. Following are the distillation ways used to extract essential oil.

Water Distillation: For oil to be extracted using a water distiller, water and plant part are heated in a container to make vapor. When this vapor cools down, it drips into another empty container meant for collecting the essential oil. Water distillation is favored for extracting oil from cinnamon and sandalwood barks.
Steam Distillation: The plant part is placed in a vacuum-sealed container and heated, generating a massive pressure that separates the oil from the particular part of the plant, meant for oil extraction. More care is required, while operating a steam distiller, as the pressure it builds can burst out of the container, if not latched properly.
Dry Steam Distillation: Dry steam distiller has the same operating mechanics, as the steam distiller. However, these are much safer to operate; but, this process can only extract very small amounts of essential oil.
Solvent Distillation: Certain plant parts do not respond well to any of the above distillation methods. For them, a solvent, such as hexane or supercritical carbon dioxide, is used. Here the solvent extracts wax and the essential oil together.

The essential oil distillers are available in many sizes. The choice of essential oil distillation apparatus depends on personal requirement. Tabletop distillers or home grown distillers are meant for home use, and consist of a copper distillation tube, a boiling flask, a receiving beaker, and a condenser. One can extract small amounts of essential oil using this apparatus. The boiling flask is filled with water and the plant material is heated to make steam. The condenser is attached to the flask with the tube, which in turn is attached to the receiving glass beaker. The receiving beaker is where the extracted oil drips, after it gets strained through the tube.

Besides the small one stated above, big essential oil distillation equipment are available to those who want to make a profit out of extracting aroma essential oils. Using organically grown plant and herb essential oil recipes and distillers, you can not only make your own essential oil at home, but also be assured of its purity.