Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Research Institute of Forest and Rangelands
Abstract
Rosa damascene is one of the aromatic and medicinal plants which its flowers are used for obtaining rose water by traditional and industrial methods. In addition of rose water, the flowers contain 0.02% essential oil which is called first oil or direct oil. This essential oil is very valuable but there are many water soluble compounds which are solved in rose water and therefore they should be extracted by different distillation methods. In this research two methods for distillation of rose water were used. These methods were distillation at atmospheric pressure (760 Torr) and vacuum. At both methods, all physicochemical parameters should be controlled till the best essential oil is obtained. This essential oil is called water oil or second oil. Essential oils, extracted from rose water by two methods, were evaluated for their chemical composition by GC and GC/MS. Comparative study of main components of essential oil obtained by distillation at atmospheric pressure and vacuum showed that the percentage of alcohols have increased by vacuum method. The amount of 2-phenyl ethyl alcohol has increased from 5.6% to 7.5%, followed by citronellol from 59.5% to 61.2% and geraniol from 13.2% to 14.3%.
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