ESSENTIAL OILS STEAM DISTILLERY - modern digital lowpressure
Steam distillation
Our essential oil distillery like any other steam distillery operates according to the basic principles of steam distillation.
Steam distillation is a process employed to extract essential oils from organic plants by passing steam generated through the plant material. Temperature sensitive compounds which would normally decompose through simple distillation vaporise at lower temperatures when subjected to steam in the distillation column. This allows for the separation of essential oils, which tend to be less soluble in boiling water, from chemically complex materials.
When the steam is passed through the organic material, tiny pockets holding the essential oils open to release the essential oil molecules without doing any damage to these delicate components. The distillate obtained will contain a mixture of water vapour and essential oils which finally return to their liquid form in the condensing apparatus. Then they are separated using a Florentine separator.
In case of essential oils, using steam allows the distillate to retain the more delicate flavours and aromas which would otherwise breakdown if high temperatures is applied. This is a great process to extract essential oils from aromatic plants to flavour liqueurs.
The key to producing a therapeutic-grade essential oil is to preserve as many of the delicate aromatic compounds within the essential oil as possible.
Fragile aromatic chemicals are easily destroyed by high temperature and pressure, as well as contact with chemically reactive metals such as copper or aluminum. Our distillery is constructed from stainless steel cooking chambers and work on low pressure and low temperature.
New Day Ltd. Helichrysum Distillery
We are proud of our new digital low-pressure essential oil distillery, which is the highlight of steam distillation. With the help of this built-in system, we fully control the condensing temperatures as well as the hydrolate temperature itself.
The condenser itself is divided into 3 zones that are independent of each other and in which we can set the desired temperatures, which enable us to achieve the optimal condesation temperature and therefore the separation of oil from water.
It is known that many organic compounds tend to decompose at high sustained temperatures. With these kind of distillery, distillation process takes place without pressure, and therefore the vapor temperature entering the distillate is minimal, and as such passes through the biomass without generating retention and similar uneven phenomena that could damage plant essence.
This distillery also provides us with one distillation circuit finished in about one hour due to the specific performance of the condenser as well as the boiler burner system, thus increasing the daily capacity of the distillation.
All of this can be controlled and monitored with modern software on the monitor, which greatly alleviates the distillation process itself.
All in all, the quality of distillation of our helichrysum oil has been raised to the highest level.
