Perfumes and Essential Oils

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Perfumes and Essential Oils
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David S. Seigler Department of Plant
BiologyUniversity of IllinoisUrbana, Illinois
61801 USAseigler_at_life.illinois.eduhttp//www.l
ife.illinois.edu/seigler
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Perfumes and Essential Oils Outline

• Importance
• Historical
• Economic
• Esthetic
• Manufacture

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• Types of perfumery ingredients
• Odorants
• Concretes
• Absolutes
• Tinctures
• Distilled oils
• Expressed Oils
• Fixatives
• Extenders

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• o Methods of isolation
• Enfleurage
• Pomade, soap
• Important oils prepared by
• enfleurage Rose, jasmine,
• violet
• Steam Distillation
• Fractional Distillation
• Important oils prepared by
• distillation Ylang-ylang,
• patchouly, oil neroli,
• lavender, lemon grass oil,
• citronella oil

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• Expression
• Important oils by expression
• lemon, lime
• Extraction
• Important oils by extraction
• Question Why is one method preferred over
  another?
• 1. Cost
• 2. Quality of product
• 3. Availability of product

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• Commercial essential oils
• Uses
• Properties
• Sources

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Reading

• CHAPTER 8 IN THE TEXT

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The origin of perfumes

• It is difficult to know when people first started
  to use perfumes. The Egyptians had become skilled
  perfumers over 5000 years ago.
• The Hebrews learned from them. Recipes for
  perfumes and incenses are found in the Torah or
  Jewish law.
• Perfumes also showed up very early in the Orient.
  The Japanese and Chinese both developed perfumes
  and incenses as well.

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A perfume market in Sudan
Courtesy Dr. Dorothea Bedigian
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• Perfumery reached its pinnacle during the Roman
  Empire. They perfumed everything. After the fall
  of the Roman Empire, perfumery in Europe just
  about disappeared.
• The Arabs maintained these skills and improved
  them.
• At the time of the Crusades, the crusaders not
  only discovered spices, but also perfumes.
• The French developed the art of perfumery even
  more.

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• There is a lot of folklore associated with
  perfumery. Many of the recipes for the best
  perfumes are guarded trade secrets.
• In the last few years, all major perfumers have a
  staff of organic chemists and perfume compounding
  is no longer an art, but a science.

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How perfumes are made

• All perfumes originally came from plants (or
  animals). The material could be used directly (as
  frankincense and myrrh) or extracted in some way.
  The challenge was (and is) how to remove the
  essential oils from the plant material without
  changing the composition.
• Other materials known as fixatives retard and
  modify the evaporation of volatile essential
  oils.

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• Odorants give the perfumes characteristic odor.
• There are five types
• concretes
• absolutes
• distilled and fractionally distilled oils
• expressed oils
• tinctures.

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http//www.fragonard.com/_at_en-us/Default.asp
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Concretes

• Many factors determine which method is used.
  Among these are cost, quality of essence, and use
  of the product.
• Concretes are the purest of the natural odorants.
  They are obtained by using a hydrocarbon solvent
  to dissolve the essential oils out of the plant.
• The solvent is then removed under vacuum by mild
  heating.

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Absolutes

• Absolutes are extracted from the non-volatile
  materials with alcohol.
• The alcohol is removed under vacuum
• The alcohol is recovered and used in colognes and
  lotions.

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Enfleurage

• Enfleurage is a special method for making
  concretes and absolutes. The petals are pressed
  onto a coating of pure lard and changed often.
• After several days, the lard has dissolved the
  released essential oils.
• The essential oils are then removed from the lard
  with alcohol.
• The residual lard is pomade.
• After extraction, the lard is used to make soaps
  etc.

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Tray of lard with jasmine flowers used for
enfleurage
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Pomade from enfleurage
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• It is possible to make exceedingly fine
  fragrances in this way, but it is also very
  expensive.
• This process today is seldom carried out in
  France, but more commonly in the Balkans and the
  Near East where labor is much cheaper.
• Grasse in Provence used to be the center for this
  industry.

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Grasse, Provence, France
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• Rose oil or attar of roses (also otto). The best
  quality oils (absolutes) sell for as much as
  10,000 per kilogram.
• From Rosa damascena (or R. alba and R.
  centifolia) in the late bud stage. These are
  small shrubs with not too showy flowers. Done
  from April to July. One g from about 2000 g of
  flowers.

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• The oil is about 40-65 citronellol but many
  minor components that are essential for good rose
  quality.
• In fact, some are quite important at less than
  0.1 of the citronellol content.
• Rose oils are usually extended before marketing.

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Rosa damascena, Rosaceae
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Rose petals
National Geographic
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Jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum, Oleaceae)

• Jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum, Oleaceae) is also
  grown in southern France. From July to October.
• 5000 flowers makes about 1 lb of flowers.
• More than 300 lbs. of flowers are required to
  make 1 lb. of oil.
• The flowers are picked at daybreak for best odor.
• Today this oil is mostly obtained by solvent
  extraction because of price.

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Jasmine, Jasminum officionale, Oleaceae
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Violet (Viola odorata, Violaceae)

• Violet (Viola odorata, Violaceae) is also from
  Grasse, Toulouse and from the Taggia valley in
  Italy. Grown under shaded conditions. January to
  April.
• The flowers are picked at night or early morning.
  1000 lbs. of flowers gives 1 lb. of oil.

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Violet, Viola odorata, Violaceae
Courtesy Dr. Anita Brinker
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Codistillation with water

• Steam distillation (or codistillation with water)
  is another gentle and widely used process.
• Much less expensive than enfleurage.
• The oils are insoluble and when the steam-oil
  mixture is condensed, the oil can be removed. The
  most volatile compounds come over first and some
  fractionation is observed.

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Fractional distillation

• Fractional distillation (without water) separates
  the components by boiling point (the explanation
  in the text is not quite accurate).
• Both steam distillation and fractional
  distillation of essential oils are much cheaper
  than enfleurage, but different mixtures of
  compounds are obtained and heat causes some
  rearrangements and changes in structure of the
  essential oil components.

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• Oil ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata, Annonaceae) is
  widely used in perfumes and is relatively
  expensive.

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Steam distilling ylang ylang, Cananga odorata
National Geographic
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Essential oil from Acacia dealbata
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Patchouly oil (Pogostemon cablin, Lamiaceae or
Labiatae)

• Patchouly oil was brought from India to England
  by the British East India Company.
• This perfume became the mark of dissolute women.
  Used in heavy perfumes and soaps as a fixative.
• Isolated by distillation. The foliage is 2-3
  oil.
• Now produced in the Seychelles and Indonesia.

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• Oil neroli (from orange blossoms) (Citrus
  aurantium) is also isolated by distillation.
• From Italy, Spain, Portugal, Provence. May.

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Lavender (Lavendula officinalis or L. vera)
(Lamiaceae or Labiatae) also important from
Provence.
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• Lemon grass oil (Cymbopogon citratus, Poaceae or
  Gramineae) is widely used as a substitute for
  expressed lemon oil.
• It is used in soaps, perfumes, food products, and
  in mosquito repellents.

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Citronella oil (Cymbopogon nardus), Poaceae, used
to be widely used as a mosquito repellent in the
South.
Bentley and Trimen, Medicinal Plants
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Expressed oils

• Expression is useful for things like lemon and
  lime peels.
• For most plants, the oils are contaminated with
  too many other undesirable compounds to make the
  method practical.
• The compounds are not changed by heat, however,
  and in some instances are better quality than
  steam distilled or fractionally distilled.

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Citrus fruits.
Carolina Biological Supply Co.
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Tinctures

• Tinctures (or alcoholic extracts) are widely
  used. They are cheap, but they are sometimes
  contaminated with other undesirable products as
  well.

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• Today, many perfumes are purely synthetic, but
  the best quality perfumes still come from plants.
• In laundry soap, this is probably not too
  critical. For good quality perfume, it's
  obviously more a concern.
• In some cases, the plants are so inexpensive,
  that synthetic products are not competitive.
• Not only the isolation of the essential oil, but
  also the compounding of the perfume is complex
  and critical.

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Types of perfumery ingredients

• Odorants
• Concretes
• Absolutes
• Tinctures
• Fixatives
• Extenders

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• The balance of essential oils, fixatives, and
  extenders is all involved. This stage is often
  highly empirical.
• Most perfume companies have a "nose" to evaluate
  the products.

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A nose
National Geographic
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Orris root, Iris florentina, Iridaceae
National Geographic
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Orris root
National Geographic
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Extenders

• Some essential oils, such as rose, jasmine, or
  neroli are very expensive.
• When used in a blend it is important that their
  fragrance is not wasted.
• Natural extenders are the oils used with the
  most expensive oils to make the blends affordable
  while at the same time respecting the notes of
  the precious oils.

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Commercial essential oils

• The major components of essential oils are
  terpenes, phenylpropanoids, and metabolized fatty
  acids. They are found in all different parts of
  plants and the essential oils from the different
  plant parts differ in composition. They often
  differ with stage of development as well.

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An alembic or still
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• Essential oils are used in soaps, deodorants,
  toilet preparations, flavoring food and
  beverages, tobacco, antiseptics, solvents (e.g.,
  turpentine), insecticides and insect repellents
  (as oil of citronella), and plasticizers in
  plastics.

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Camphor tree, Cinnamomum camphora, Lauraceae
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Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus globulis, Myrtaceae
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Sassafras, Sassafras albidum, Lauraceae
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Juniper or cedar, Juniperus virginiana,
Cupressaceae
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