Hazelnut essential oil is a natural essential oil made from hazelnuts that is rich in nutrients and has many benefits. Hazelnut oil has the functions and effects of supplementing nutrition, moisturizing the intestines and laxative, helping to improve skin condition, helping to improve memory, and eliminating fatigue.
There are two common extraction methods for hazelnut essential oil:
1. Steam distillation method
Steam distillation is a commonly used method for extracting plant essential oils. The distillation equipment has a large volume, is simple to operate, and has low cost. This method is suitable for the extraction of active ingredients that are volatile, can evaporate with water vapor without being destroyed, do not react with water, and are difficult to dissolve in water.
Put fresh or dried aromatic plant raw materials into a distiller, add water and heat them together. Under the action of steam, the essential oil components in the plants and the water vapor are evaporated together. The water vapor containing the essential oil is collected and cooled through the tube, and the steam will cool down. into a liquid, and then separated according to the density difference between water and essential oil. Taking advantage of the characteristics of essential oil components that are easily volatile, difficult to dissolve in water and do not react with water, they are condensed and collected to obtain essential oils.
2. Solvent extraction method
The organic solvent extraction method applies the principle of similarity and compatibility. Since oil has good solubility in organic solvents, oil is extracted from oil cells through full exchange of organic solvents and oil. The leaching method for preparing oil has the advantages of high oil yield, low extraction temperature, high production efficiency, and is suitable for large-scale production.
Generally, the solvent and plant materials are put into an extractor to mix and extract, so that the volatile substances are dissolved in the solvent; then filtered; then, the solvent is evaporated and concentrated to obtain a filtrate, and the concentrated liquid is called extract (a mixture of wax and essential oils); The extract is dissolved in ethanol and filtered at low temperature to remove impurities; the ethanol is evaporated to obtain essential oil.
The preparation process of hazelnut essential oil is introduced in detail below.
1. Prepare raw materials: Prepare high-quality hazelnuts, edible alcohol, distilled water, etc. in advance, wash and dry the hazelnuts.
2. Crushing: Hazelnuts are crushed, usually using equipment such as a mortar or mixer, to grind them into finer granular materials for subsequent operations.
3. Quality control: Before starting to prepare essential oils, quality control and testing are required to ensure that the quality and purity of the raw materials meet the requirements.
4. Extract essential oil: Put the crushed hazelnuts into the extractor, and add ethanol and other solvents for extraction. The extraction time depends on actual needs and usually takes more than a few hours. During the extraction process, the extractor can be heated to increase the extraction speed.
5. Distillation: Distill the extracted solution. Through distillation, the moisture and other impurities in the hazelnut essence are separated to obtain pure hazelnut essential oil. This process must be done very carefully, paying attention to the distillation time and temperature to ensure that the distillation process proceeds smoothly.
In the process of preparing hazelnut essential oil, it is necessary to use high-quality hazelnuts and other raw materials, master certain preparation skills and operating methods, and at the same time, high-quality and professional essential oil extraction equipment is also essential.