How can I dissolve plant material without changing-

[Crafticharli]

I have a question which is ungoogleable.

Question:

What is the most efficient way to fully dissolve plant matter without destroying its chemical make up, for distillation purposes?

Background Information:

I started down this rabbit hole while researching the viability of a artisanal soap making small business. I realized that everything you find online has "kitchen warriors" who are "experts" and have zero idea about chemistry or the importance of precise measurements. I am not a chemist but I am a computer systems engineer, and if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right. It was during this research that I realized a substantial amount of money could be saved by self distillation which led me to my question.

When extracting plant "essential oils" - which I have discovered are NOT oils at all, but "plant essence" in a carrier oil - the basic process involves steam distillation which seems to me terribly wasteful.

This led me to wonder; if I ground up the plant material and boiled it in a round bottom flask into a glass distillation setup - would this produce more product? Why do these people on instruction sites (who are not chemists) insist that chopping up the plant matter would reduce what you can get out of it? Searching for this answer led me here.

 

[Crafticharli]

aaaaand STONERS FOR THE WIN!

Not really - lol - I should say "cannabis extraction experts" I should have thought of this, but they have already figured out everything I wanted to know.

For future reference, if anyone else wants to know, CO2 extraction is the most efficient method, and unless you're an engineer, you probably shouldn't do it.

I'll post pics if it works.

 

[Nik_2213]

IIRC, steam distillation of essential oils was simple and reliable.

Long ago, I did some 'purchase sample' analyses of plants for their oils, before expectorant actives went synthetic. We had a real-neat apparatus shaped like a diamond with integral thermometer well, condenser, inverted weir for automatically recycling the water, a burette tap for drainage...

Ha ! Found it !
http://glassagencies.com/product/Essential-Oil-Determination-Apparatus.aspx

This was MUCH more efficient than a simple 'steam distillation' setup, as boiling flask kept a near-constant level, did not run low or char...

Down in the 'works', they stewed and stirred a big mash of greens etc with warm alcohol, then filtered or centrifuged the resulting, rather icky mess...

FWIW, super-critical CO2 extraction may be the industrial solution, but that technology is NOT for the amateur...

 

[jim mcnamara]

When you are trying to extract specific "essential oils" it helps to know what family of molecules you want to fine tune your solvent, and where the concentration of the oils is high in the plant.

Example:
We extracted α-Thujone (one primary oil in the kitchen herb sage - Salvia officinalis) by hydrodistallation from leaves only because the oils are concentrated in intracellular "bags" there. We macerated in solvent-only, then used distillation to get the fraction we were interested in.

Plant cells have a cell wall, which protects the cells, so mechanical maceration is a must. Like when you smack up fresh sage leaves in a mortar and pestle. Blenders and strong food processors work well for this. The trick is to add a solvent that favors dissolution of the product, and hopefully not everything else like chlorophyll. The condenser shown by @Nik_2213 would be great for distillation.

The other major economic problem is the concentration of what product you want. There is a reason why some herbs and extracts have varying flavor: the amount of "essential oils". You also have to watch the levels of other molecules that come along for the ride. And use materials that have good yield of your desired product. This is not trivial.

If what you are making is supposed to be comestible or non-irritating do some research on what you are producing. You do not want make make your customer base ill. Do your homework!

For example, Romanian Salvia extracts can be high in α-thujone and related molecules. Higher levels are bad, see the abstract here.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20701010

Some essential oils and extracts are illegal to ship to some places: example Yohimbine anywhere in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohimbine