Intro: In this project my and my partner Maia we will be making hydrosols out of natural ingredients such as flowers, leaves and herbs. Mostly using the technique distilation. Our essential question is How can we extract the oils out of plants? We will be experimenting with ways to go about this process and we will be researching how this happens.
Monday: Hydrosols are extracted oils from plants using evaporation. They are stemmed and distilled using a special distillation apparatus with a round bottom flask. The first thing Maia and I did was grind up the plant material I brought in using the mortar in pistol. We made sure to take out the stems of the plants and to rip up the leaves to make it easier to grind up. At that point I really liked the smell it was very natural and fresh. At first we were a little confused on what to do next because the instructions we were going to use were a bit vague. So we asked Andrew what method we should use to extract the oils, he showed us the distillation apparatus it looked pretty complicated. But it wasn't that hard to set up. The base of it works kind of like a heating plate but in the shape to hold a symmetrical flask. Next we put the processed plants along with some water into a round bottom flask. It has a small opening, which we attached a glass pipe with a bubble near the end. That bubble was used to filter out the oil from the steem/water because the molecules in the oil are heavier then in the water so the oil will drip out of the bubble and into a another container. You can get a better idea of what it looked liked in the slide show down bellow. Then we plugged it in the smell began getting strong so we moved our experiment into the fume hood. After a couple of minutes the plants and water began to come to a boil and the flask began to steam up. The plant mixture seemed to bubble up and expand as the rose to evaporate. Steam started to escape out of opening of the tube. We didn't realize this for a while but the steam is what has most of the concentrated sensed oils in it. So we had to find another way to set up so that we could preserve more of the smell. The next thing we tried was putting a piece of tin foil over the opening of the pipe tilting down to the collecting flask. That worked alright but still much of the steam was escaping. When Andrew saw that he showed us another piece of equipment we could use to prevent the steam from leaving. It was a glass tube with a thin spiraling tube glass going up all the way to the top. It is made for filtering hot liquids. This defiantly worked better but it was taking a while to get the liquid and stem all the way to the top. It was nearing the end of class, but Andrew said that he had a better idea on how to set up the filtering equipment. We had to clean up so I poured my hydrosol into a spray bottle we didn't get that much extract I think because all the stem the escaped. It was a clear liquid it did not smell as good as I had hoped. I think it was due to the plants were old because they sat over the weekend and I should have not mixed so many different types of plants. So it ended up smelling kind of like artichokes or some kind of aging vegetable. But for the first attempt of hydrosols in Andrew's class it wasn't bad. We learned quite a bit through out the process of trail and error so I think that tomorrow when we work on Maia's hydrosols we will now what to do right of the bat to make it better and a simpler process.
Tuesday- Today we made hydrosols or essential oils out of the plants that Maia brought in. She brought roses and lavender. It smelled very good when we ground it up. The beginning was basically the same as mine you grind up the plants. And put them into a round bottom flask we set up the heating apparatus. And the spiral tube filter that we used yesterday. Instead of this time from the top of the spiral filter Andrew told us to attach a rubber tube at the end of the second filter of it leading to a beaker for collection. We secured all of this with a clips that you screwed into place. This apparatus limited the amount of steam and oil the would escape. So our hydrofoil turned out more concentrated then yesterday. Although it still had a strange vegetable sent due to the age of the plants I think. Also I think another factor of the smell may be that the processed plants are sting in water for a long time and almost getting cooked changing the smell when it was dry and at room temperature. It was a lot of fun again watching the water and oil mist up then evaporate up the spiral tube then getting filtered through. (I will insert a short video showing what that looks like)
Summaries:
What happened- The ending product did not turn out exactly the way we wanted it to because it did not smell very good. But essentially it still worked we got a oil out of plants. Our product was two small bottles of oils in two different scents it was probably about a quarter cup in total. I would say that we got more out of this lab then hydro sols. To me it was more about what we learned and the process we went through to get to our product. There will pictures of our actual artifacts in the slide show down bellow. (In the posts above I go into much more detail about what I did each day)
What do you think has happened/The Science behind hydrosols- On a molecular level what has happened to make hydrosols is, When oil is exposed to heat and air the water evaporates only leaving the purified oil with a concentrated sent. So as all the liquid from the flask travels up the spiral tube it is distilling and the heavier components are dripping back down to the main beaker where is the oils are moving into steam and rising to the top of the apparatus. The term hydrosol means suspension of particles in water. Extracted the oils out of plants is called distillation. Hydrosols include the water-soluble with some volatile components such as essential oils.The science of distillation is based on the fact that different plant materials vaporize different temperatures. Compounds with a higher vaporization point will remain behind and will include many of the water soluble plant scents. Because hydrosols are made at high temperatures and are usually acidic, they tend to grow bacteria quickly. This science has been used far back in time people used it as skin treatments and aroma therapies. That might be one of the reasons our oils smelled bad because they were growing bacteria and we did not do anything to preserve it. Hydrosols are very simple in the sense that it is quite a easy thing to make but there is a lot going on with the different liquids that you can not see with the bare eye.
Lab Practice: Like I said our results where as not as desirable as we had hoped but we had a lot of fun and learned a lot throughout the process. The part that made it not desirable results was that it didn't smell good like we had hoped. I think that is because it the plants where getting old and we should have not mixed many different types of plants together. I think we preformed this activity well, we did our best and we stayed on track. Even through the way we did it changed a lot from what we proposed.
Collaboration: In this project I worked with Maia. We have worked in many other projects before and we always come out with a quality project. I think we preformed well we didn't have any problems even if something went unexpected we revolved it together. And I think that the work was well distributed because we each helped each other with our hydrosols.
What next: If I was to do this project again things I would change would be.
I would want Maia as my partner again because she went through the same process of me so we would both be on the same page and work much faster. We could continue this experiment with our goal being to make a hydrosol that smells good. I may want to continue as like a mini lab just to get a product that I would want to use.
Take Aways:
The things I took away from this lab is:
Monday: Hydrosols are extracted oils from plants using evaporation. They are stemmed and distilled using a special distillation apparatus with a round bottom flask. The first thing Maia and I did was grind up the plant material I brought in using the mortar in pistol. We made sure to take out the stems of the plants and to rip up the leaves to make it easier to grind up. At that point I really liked the smell it was very natural and fresh. At first we were a little confused on what to do next because the instructions we were going to use were a bit vague. So we asked Andrew what method we should use to extract the oils, he showed us the distillation apparatus it looked pretty complicated. But it wasn't that hard to set up. The base of it works kind of like a heating plate but in the shape to hold a symmetrical flask. Next we put the processed plants along with some water into a round bottom flask. It has a small opening, which we attached a glass pipe with a bubble near the end. That bubble was used to filter out the oil from the steem/water because the molecules in the oil are heavier then in the water so the oil will drip out of the bubble and into a another container. You can get a better idea of what it looked liked in the slide show down bellow. Then we plugged it in the smell began getting strong so we moved our experiment into the fume hood. After a couple of minutes the plants and water began to come to a boil and the flask began to steam up. The plant mixture seemed to bubble up and expand as the rose to evaporate. Steam started to escape out of opening of the tube. We didn't realize this for a while but the steam is what has most of the concentrated sensed oils in it. So we had to find another way to set up so that we could preserve more of the smell. The next thing we tried was putting a piece of tin foil over the opening of the pipe tilting down to the collecting flask. That worked alright but still much of the steam was escaping. When Andrew saw that he showed us another piece of equipment we could use to prevent the steam from leaving. It was a glass tube with a thin spiraling tube glass going up all the way to the top. It is made for filtering hot liquids. This defiantly worked better but it was taking a while to get the liquid and stem all the way to the top. It was nearing the end of class, but Andrew said that he had a better idea on how to set up the filtering equipment. We had to clean up so I poured my hydrosol into a spray bottle we didn't get that much extract I think because all the stem the escaped. It was a clear liquid it did not smell as good as I had hoped. I think it was due to the plants were old because they sat over the weekend and I should have not mixed so many different types of plants. So it ended up smelling kind of like artichokes or some kind of aging vegetable. But for the first attempt of hydrosols in Andrew's class it wasn't bad. We learned quite a bit through out the process of trail and error so I think that tomorrow when we work on Maia's hydrosols we will now what to do right of the bat to make it better and a simpler process.
Tuesday- Today we made hydrosols or essential oils out of the plants that Maia brought in. She brought roses and lavender. It smelled very good when we ground it up. The beginning was basically the same as mine you grind up the plants. And put them into a round bottom flask we set up the heating apparatus. And the spiral tube filter that we used yesterday. Instead of this time from the top of the spiral filter Andrew told us to attach a rubber tube at the end of the second filter of it leading to a beaker for collection. We secured all of this with a clips that you screwed into place. This apparatus limited the amount of steam and oil the would escape. So our hydrofoil turned out more concentrated then yesterday. Although it still had a strange vegetable sent due to the age of the plants I think. Also I think another factor of the smell may be that the processed plants are sting in water for a long time and almost getting cooked changing the smell when it was dry and at room temperature. It was a lot of fun again watching the water and oil mist up then evaporate up the spiral tube then getting filtered through. (I will insert a short video showing what that looks like)
Summaries:
What happened- The ending product did not turn out exactly the way we wanted it to because it did not smell very good. But essentially it still worked we got a oil out of plants. Our product was two small bottles of oils in two different scents it was probably about a quarter cup in total. I would say that we got more out of this lab then hydro sols. To me it was more about what we learned and the process we went through to get to our product. There will pictures of our actual artifacts in the slide show down bellow. (In the posts above I go into much more detail about what I did each day)
What do you think has happened/The Science behind hydrosols- On a molecular level what has happened to make hydrosols is, When oil is exposed to heat and air the water evaporates only leaving the purified oil with a concentrated sent. So as all the liquid from the flask travels up the spiral tube it is distilling and the heavier components are dripping back down to the main beaker where is the oils are moving into steam and rising to the top of the apparatus. The term hydrosol means suspension of particles in water. Extracted the oils out of plants is called distillation. Hydrosols include the water-soluble with some volatile components such as essential oils.The science of distillation is based on the fact that different plant materials vaporize different temperatures. Compounds with a higher vaporization point will remain behind and will include many of the water soluble plant scents. Because hydrosols are made at high temperatures and are usually acidic, they tend to grow bacteria quickly. This science has been used far back in time people used it as skin treatments and aroma therapies. That might be one of the reasons our oils smelled bad because they were growing bacteria and we did not do anything to preserve it. Hydrosols are very simple in the sense that it is quite a easy thing to make but there is a lot going on with the different liquids that you can not see with the bare eye.
Lab Practice: Like I said our results where as not as desirable as we had hoped but we had a lot of fun and learned a lot throughout the process. The part that made it not desirable results was that it didn't smell good like we had hoped. I think that is because it the plants where getting old and we should have not mixed many different types of plants together. I think we preformed this activity well, we did our best and we stayed on track. Even through the way we did it changed a lot from what we proposed.
Collaboration: In this project I worked with Maia. We have worked in many other projects before and we always come out with a quality project. I think we preformed well we didn't have any problems even if something went unexpected we revolved it together. And I think that the work was well distributed because we each helped each other with our hydrosols.
What next: If I was to do this project again things I would change would be.
- To use the plants right after we picked them.
- To only one type of plant per hydrosol
- Research more before we started this project
I would want Maia as my partner again because she went through the same process of me so we would both be on the same page and work much faster. We could continue this experiment with our goal being to make a hydrosol that smells good. I may want to continue as like a mini lab just to get a product that I would want to use.
Take Aways:
The things I took away from this lab is:
- How to use equipment like the distillation apparatus.
- Vaporization
- Different kinds of liquid molecules
- How to adjust expertness to make the out come better
- Solubles