How do we separate chemical constituents like cinnamon aldehyde from a bulk essential oils what methods do we use and what equipments do we use to separate

[dsw6]

Hello everyone, im a mechanical eng student but im interested in a chemistry related question. how do we separate chemical constituents like cinnamon aldehyde from a bulk cinnamon bark oil? what methods do we use and what equipments do we use to separate these components. im interested doing a start up and It would be really helpful if you could help me out. you could directly reach me at spiceblends0@gmail.com / dsw6@njit.edu

[scooke]

Dear Dulshan,

Generally, a combination of pre-crushing/grinding and solvent extraction is used. The type of preparation and specific solvents used for extraction, isolation and purification will depend on the particular "essential oil" being extracted. There should be at least basic information on the extraction process - at least at lab scales - online. Scaling that up for a commercial production is what the engineering is all about.

See my post in the archives of this Question Page for a note about what you need to consider in finding/hiring a consultant or setting up a business.

Best regards,

Steven

[hatlevis]

Check this article and there are youtubes on this. Again, it depends on the scale as previously mentioned.

Cinnamaldehyde by Steam Distillation of Cinnamon

Douglass F. Taber, and Andrew J. Weiss

University of Delaware, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Newark, DE 19716

J. Chem. Educ., 1998, 75 (5), p 633

DOI: 10.1021/ed075p633

Publication Date (Web): May 1, 1998

[jhlauterbach]

Aromatic aldehydes readily form acetals with glycols and sugars. For example, benzaldehyde form a crystalline benzylidene derivative with alpha methyl glucopyranoside in the presence of a trace acid catalyst. Procedure came form old carbohydrate literature but at least reference to it can be found in JOC Vol. 34, No. 1, pp 86-92, January 1969. Just take your crude extract, add the right polyol or sugar, and separate the acetal by crystallization or prep HPLC. Once you have the desired acetal purified, there are several mild ways to get the aldehyhde back.

John

[sarrowsmith]

There is a rather fabulous paper by Firas A Al-Bayati that outlines an extraction protocol via steam distillation and then FTIR and HPLC were used to confirm the purity.

Firas A. Al-Bayati & Muthanna J. Mohammed (2009) Isolation, identification, and purification of cinnamaldehyde from Cinnamomum zeylanicum bark oil. An antibacterial study, Pharmaceutical Biology, 47:1, 61-66, DOI: 10.1080/13880200802430607

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13880200802430607

If you must use an instrument for quantification or to test purity, using the HPLC is probably the easiest. However there are GC-MS methods (which requires access to an instrument that probably costs more than your parent's mortgage.. haha..ah...).

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed085p957

Determination of Cinnamaldehyde in Cinnamon by SPME–GC–MS. An Instrumental Analysis Experiment

Yimin Wang, Jessica Ocariz, Jennifer Hammersand, Evan MacDonald, Ashley Bartczak, Frank Kero, Vaneica Y. Young, and Kathryn R. Williams

Journal of Chemical Education 2008 85 (7), 957

DOI: 10.1021/ed085p957

If you just want a purified product and don't care about analytical measurements, then a steam distillation process is definitively the easiest route. At scale, doing a chemical extraction and then using a roto-vap, might also be helpful.

ValueVap RE-502 | Rotovaps.net