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Pretreatment and distilling processes of Eucalyptus globulus leaves for enhancing essential oil production

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Abstract

Producing high quality essential oil from Eucalyptus globulus leaves, distillation is the primary method that is both economical and environmentally friendly. In order to improve the producing process, provide renewal information as reference for further practical applications, the effects of the storage conditions (air-drying, freezing, chilling, and oven-assisted drying) as well as the grinding (less than 4.75, 4.75–9.50, 9.50–22.40, and greater than 22.40 mm), ultrasound (ultrasonic cleaning bath, ultrasonic homogenizer), and agitation treatments (0 ~ 100 rpm) of the samples were studied. In addition, the yield differences by different methods (steam distillation and the water distillation) were compared. Considering both the yield and the operation time, the technique, which extracting small-sized (smaller than 4.70 mm) oven-assisted dried leaves with water distillation under an agitation rate of 25 rpm, should be ideal for the production of essential oil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan

    Xue-Ying Mei, Yutaka Kitamura, Kenzi Takizawa, Akira Kikuchi & Kazuo Watanabe

  2. University of Tsukuba, Room 305, Food and Biomass Engineering Lab, Institutes of Biological and Agricultural Science Building G, Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan

    Yutaka Kitamura

Authors
  1. Xue-Ying Mei
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  2. Yutaka Kitamura
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  3. Kenzi Takizawa
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  4. Akira Kikuchi
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  5. Kazuo Watanabe
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Correspondence to Yutaka Kitamura.

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Highlights

• Comparing to storage condition of chilling, both drying and freezing presented high productivity

• By the storage method of oven-assisted drying the loss of the volatile organics during the grinding step decreased

• Water distillation can speed up the production rate, comparing to steam distillation

• Water distillation provided positive effect on dried leaves but negative effect on frozen ones

• As stirring rate increased, distillation efficiency was enhanced and then held constant

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Mei, XY., Kitamura, Y., Takizawa, K. et al. Pretreatment and distilling processes of Eucalyptus globulus leaves for enhancing essential oil production. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 4, 285–292 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-013-0113-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-013-0113-3

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