How could I extract oil from a plant?

Question

an easy way of getting oil extracts from any part of a plant

Answer 1

I have used solvent extraction successfully in the past.  You need a solvent that can dissolve the type of oil you are interested in.  Also, it should evaporate easily.  Acetone works for my purposes.  Do NOT try to boil off the acetone, it is very flammable and can blow up.  One other problem is that the acetone will dissolve many other compounds out of the plant also, like chlorophyll, resins from the sap, anthocyanins which give the plant color, just to name a few.  

Some plant exracts are heat sensitive so cold processing methods must be used, like cold pressing.  More stable compounds can tolerate the heat of steam distillation.  Fragrance oils from flowers tend to be more sensitive.

The advantage of acetone is that it is a good solvent and evaporates so easily that it does not need to be boiled off. Just leave it in an open dish on a warm day and it will soon be gone (it takes longer when it has something dissolved in it.)  This means that you can do a cold extraction without using a press and you can use a smaller sample size also.  

Basically, just chop your plant parts into small sizes and soak for a while in a bottle with acetone or whatever solvent you use, then filter out the solids and let the acetone evaporate and the residue will be what it extracted.

Answer 2

Extracting oil from plants is a tradition dating back to the beginning of history. It has many applications including culinary (cooking oils, flavoring), medicinal (essential oils, aromatherapy), and cosmetic (perfumes, bath products). There are many way to extract oil from plants: distillation, expression (cold pressing), maceration and solvent extraction. This article will focus on the first three, which are easiest and do not require complex scientific equipment.

Things You’ll Need:

    * Herbs/plants

    * Bowl

    * Oil

    * Strainer

    * Cheesecloth

    * Still

    * Burner

Step1

Use the maceration method of extracting oil from plants. This is the easiest method of extracting oil from plants. This is mainly for an aromatherapy benefit. Soak the plant matter in vegetable oil, heat up the oil for a few minutes (not boiling, just heated on medium high).

Step2

Let the oil cool for a bit (don't let it get cold) and strain the mixture to separate the plant material from the oil. You have now created a plant infused oil that is ideal for massage purposes.

Step3

Expression is also known as cold pressing. This is a great process for things like citrus oils.

Step4

Remove the rind from the citrus fruit you'd like to press--such as orange, lemon or grapefruit.

Step5

Chop or grind the rind of the citrus fruit.

Step6

Press the rind mixture through a strainer or cheesecloth and catch the juice in a bowl. The product you get will be a watery blend of liquid and essential oil, which tends to separate over time. This product has a short shelf life (six months), so make only what you will use in that time frame.

Step7

Steam distillation is another relatively easy way to extract oil from plants. To do this, you must have a still (this is similar to a pressure cooker). You can purchase or make your own still, but these directions assume that you already have one.

Step8

Place the plant material in the still. Add water to the still. Heat the water slowly.

Step9

The heat will create pressurized steam in the still. As the pressurized steam passes through the plant material, the oil in the plant is vaporized. The oil vapor passes out of the top of the still through a coil where the oil vapors condense back to liquids in a collection chamber. The oil separates from the water and floats to the top of the mixture.

Step10

Skim the oil off of the water and you now have extracted oil from a plant for whatever use you'd l

Answer 3

Steam distillation. It's pretty easy as long as you can get the equipment - we used it to extract eucalyptus oil in a science lesson at school.

Answer 4

The easiest way is probably to use isopropyl alcohol, Chloroform or acetone as a solvent - you should be able to buy most of them at your local pharmacy.

Mash up your plant - add your solvent of choice and leave it somewhere sheltered but well ventilated and cold. preferably outside.

filter the mash and you should now have 2 liquids (one on top of the other).

The easiest part is to rack off(siphon)the oil from the top using a rubber tube - if you dont get a pure siphon the 1st go just keep doing it, or my fav method is to siphon from underneath and remove all the unwanted water etc leaving only the oil.

Answer 5

Soak it in vodka or in pure ethyl alcohol, if you can get it.  This dissolves the oil out of the plant.  Then if you don't want the alcohol in the extract, you can let it evaporate out.