Okay, first note: Mr. Penguin is not a chemistry person and so did not do this experiment nor write this thing. Mr. Nick does this, and all correspondence should be directed accordingly. Thank you..
Mr. Nick says: "Recently I have started mucking around with chemistry. Some may make explosives and try and blow up things but alas that is not chemistry. That is hooliganism. I prefer the more refined chemical processes, excepting hydrogen. I love hydrogen. Anyway I decided I would make a still. Yes, that’s what the equipment used to distill stuff is called, a still. Now some may say why don’t you just buy one, two reasons. One, it is very expensive (for my budget anyway). Two, when you make your own you can make it as big as you want."
| Certain compounds, namely organic compounds, which have high boiling points can be distilled by using steam distillation. Steam distillation is the process of purifying a substance through application of steam to them. Basically that means steam distillation purifies stuff by heating something with steam. This process is mainly used to extract essential oils from their associated natural sources, e.g Eucalyptus oil from Eucalyptus leaves. |
Image courtesy of www.ktf-split.hr |
Image courtesy of www.what-means.com |
Steam distillation works on the principle that immiscible
objects when mixed together can lower the boiling point of each other.
I understand this concept but maybe you don’t, it takes too long
to explain so visit this really fun and informative site
Historically and in some regions of the world today essential
oils were obtained by a rather primitive and ugly process. By boiling
some organic matter with water and then condensing the resultant vapour/gas,
one can obtain some essential oils. |
After performing quite a fun
experiment in year 8, I learned of this process. Of course at the time
I had no understanding of the concepts involved but yes that was the past
and this is now. The experiment was that the teacher had the day before
told us to go home and grab some plant matter, anything that smelled nice.
The next day the class came up with this motley collection of half rotted
leaves and flower, of course we distilled them. Anyway what resulted was
I made quite a nice smelling solution of presumably lemon grass essential
oil and water. |
Image courtesy of www.floridata.com |
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Firstly I decided I would make the condenser. A condenser is usually made out of glass but as I don’t magically produce glass with perfect cuts and fits I made my own design. |
Now, I can be what some consider
impulsive so in one night I came up with this pile of rubbish. |
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After realizing the complete hopelessness of ever using something like that I rebuilt my condenser in a more planned, sturdier, and definitely better way [left]. The wonders of PVC and the ability to weld it easily made the construction of this quite easy. The only non-plastic component of this is the copper condensing tube on the inside of the water jacket (you can’t see it, duh!). |
| Once the condenser was constructed the only thing left to make was a boiling chamber. My first few attempts resulted in an olive oil bottle with a piece of PVC pipe shoved down its neck. The problem with this was that I could not directly heat it, as it wasn’t proper glassware, it was just glass not a borosilicate like normal laboratory-grade glassware. Direct heating may lead to explosions, which are neither pretty nor welcome. After a while I acquired some glassware, specifically a vacuum flask, and with this my distillation set up became complete. |
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I have performed two distillations so far. I have distilled lemon grass and aloe vera. These both produce rather nice smelling solutions of oil and water. To the left is the evaporation chamber with lemon grass in. |
The whole setup. Apologies
for crap-ass picture, this was a complete lash up. |
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| And, no pictures of distilled stuff as of yet..... :( | By: Nick (the chemistry man) |
© Penguin's Lab 2007
