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Steam distillation

 
Steam Distillation

 
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Steam distillation
 
 
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Steam distillation is a special type of distillation
Distillation

Distillation is a method of separation process mixtures based on differences in their Volatility in a boiling liquid mixture. Distillation is a unit operation, or a physical separation process, and not a chemical reaction....
 (a separation process) for temperature sensitive materials like natural aromatic
Aromaticity

Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated system ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone....
 compounds.

Many organic compound
Organic compound

An organic compound is any member of a large class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of compounds such as carbonates, simple oxides of carbon and cyanides, as well as the allotropes of carbon, are considered Inorganic compound....
s tend to decompose
Chemical decomposition

Chemical decomposition or analysis is the separation of a chemical compound into chemical element or smaller compounds. It is sometimes defined as the opposite of a chemical synthesis....
 at high sustained temperatures. Separation by normal distillation would then not be an option, so water or steam
Steam

In physical chemistry, and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water. It is a pure, completely invisible gaseous phase . At standard temperature and pressure, pure steam occupies about 1,600 times the volume of an equal mass of liquid water....
 is introduced into the distillation apparatus.






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Encyclopedia


Steam Distillation
Steam distillation is a special type of distillation
Distillation

Distillation is a method of separation process mixtures based on differences in their Volatility in a boiling liquid mixture. Distillation is a unit operation, or a physical separation process, and not a chemical reaction....
 (a separation process) for temperature sensitive materials like natural aromatic
Aromaticity

Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated system ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone....
 compounds.

Many organic compound
Organic compound

An organic compound is any member of a large class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of compounds such as carbonates, simple oxides of carbon and cyanides, as well as the allotropes of carbon, are considered Inorganic compound....
s tend to decompose
Chemical decomposition

Chemical decomposition or analysis is the separation of a chemical compound into chemical element or smaller compounds. It is sometimes defined as the opposite of a chemical synthesis....
 at high sustained temperatures. Separation by normal distillation would then not be an option, so water or steam
Steam

In physical chemistry, and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water. It is a pure, completely invisible gaseous phase . At standard temperature and pressure, pure steam occupies about 1,600 times the volume of an equal mass of liquid water....
 is introduced into the distillation apparatus. By adding water or steam, the boiling point
Boiling point

The boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the environmental pressure surrounding the liquid....
s of the compounds are depressed, allowing them to evaporate at lower temperatures, preferably below the temperatures at which the deterioration of the material becomes appreciable. If the substances to be distilled are very sensitive to heat, steam distillation can also be combined with vacuum distillation
Vacuum distillation

Vacuum distillation is a method of distillation whereby the pressure above the liquid mixture to be distilled is reduced to less than its vapor pressure causing evaporation of the most volatile liquid ....
. After distillation the vapors are condensed as usual, usually yielding a two-phase system
Phase (matter)

In the physical sciences, a phase is a region of space , throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform. Examples of physical properties include density, refractive index, and chemical composition....
 of water and the organic compounds, allowing for simple separation.

Principle

When a mixture of two practically immiscible
Miscibility

Miscibility is a term commonly used in chemistry that refers to the property of liquids to mix in all proportions, forming a Homogeneity solution....
 liquids is heated while being agitated to expose the surfaces of both the liquids to the vapor phase, each constituent independently exerts its own vapor pressure
Vapor pressure

Vapor pressure , is the pressure of a vapor in Thermodynamic equilibrium with its non-vapor Phase s. All liquids and solids have a tendency to evaporate to a gaseous form, and all gases have a tendency to Condensation back into their original form ....
 as a function of temperature as if the other constituent were not present. Consequently, the vapor pressure of the whole system increases. Boiling begins when the sum of the partial pressure
Partial pressure

In a mixture of ideal gases, each gas has a partial pressure which is the pressure which the gas would have if it alone occupied the volume. The total pressure of a gas mixture is the sum of the partial pressures of each individual gas in the mixture....
s of the two immiscible liquids just exceeds the atmospheric pressure
Atmospheric pressure

Atmospheric pressure is sometimes defined as the force per unit area exerted against a surface by the weight of air above that surface at any given point in the Earth's atmosphere....
 (approximately 101 kPa at sea level). In this way, many organic compounds insoluble in water can be purified at a temperature well below the point at which decomposition occurs. For example, the boiling point of bromobenzene
Bromobenzene

Bromobenzenes are a group of halocarbons formed in a substitution reaction between bromine and benzene with a hydrogen bromide by-product. The name strictly refers to monobromobenzene, a benzene with a single bromine; however it can be used to refer to a benzene containing any number of bromine molecules....
 is 156 °C and the boiling point of water is 100 °C, but a mixture of the two boils at 95 °C. Thus, bromobenzene can be easily distilled at a temperature 61 C° below its normal boiling point.

Applications

Steam distillation is employed in the manufacture of essential oil
Essential oil

An essential oil is a concentrated, hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. They are also known as volatile or ethereal oils, or simply as the "oil of" the plant material from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove....
s, for instance, perfumes. In this method, steam is passed through the plant material containing the desired oils. It is also employed in the synthetic procedures of complex organic compounds. Eucalyptus oil
Eucalyptus oil

Eucalyptus oil is the generic name for distilled oil from Eucalyptus, a genus of the plant family Myrtaceae native to Australia and cultivated worldwide....
 and orange oil
Orange oil

Orange oil is an essential oil produced by glands inside the rind of an orange . It is extracted or Steam distillation as a by-product of orange juice production....
 are obtained by this method on the industrial scale.

Steam distillation is also widely used in petroleum refineries
Oil refinery

An oil refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas....
 and petrochemical
Petrochemical

Petrochemicals are chemical products made from raw materials of petroleum or other hydrocarbon origin. Although some of the chemical compounds that originate from petroleum may also be derived from coal and natural gas, petroleum is the major source....
 plants where it is commonly referred to as "steam stripping".

Other industrial uses of steam distillation include the production of consumer food products such as sprayable or aerosolized condiments such as sprayable mayonnaise.

History

Steam distillation was invented by the Arab chemist, Ibn Sina
Avicenna

, known as Abu Ali Sina Balkhi or Ibn Sina and commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna , was a Persian people polymath and the foremost Islamic medicine and Early Islamic philosophy of his time....
 (known as Avicenna in the West), in the early 11th century. He invented it for the purpose of extracting essential oil
Essential oil

An essential oil is a concentrated, hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. They are also known as volatile or ethereal oils, or simply as the "oil of" the plant material from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove....
s, which is used in aromatherapy
Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is a form of alternative medicine that uses volatile liquid plant materials, known as essential oils , and other aromatic compounds from plants for the purpose of affecting a person's mood or health....
 and the drinking
Drinking

Drinking is the act of consuming water through the mouth. Water is required for many of life?s physiological processes. Both excessive and inadequate water intake are associated with health problems....
 and perfume
Perfume

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant smell....
ry industries.

The invention of steam distillation contributed significantly to the development of perfume
Perfume

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant smell....
ry, in perfecting the extraction of fragrances. The steam distillation technology significantly influenced Western perfumery and scientific
Science

In its broadest sense, science refers to any systematic knowledge or practice. In its more usual restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research....
 developments, particularly chemistry
Chemistry

Chemistry is the science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions....
.

See also

  • Azeotropic distillation
    Azeotropic distillation

    In chemistry, azeotropic distillation is any of a range of techniques used to break an azeotrope in distillation. In chemical engineering, azeotropic distillation usually refers to the specific technique of adding another component to generate a new lower-boiling azeotrope that is heterogeneous, such as the example below with the additio...
  • Batch distillation
    Batch distillation

    Batch distillation refers to the use of distillation in batches, meaning that a mixture is distilled to separate it into its component fractions before the distillation still is again charged with more mixture and the process is repeated....
  • Distillation
    Distillation

    Distillation is a method of separation process mixtures based on differences in their Volatility in a boiling liquid mixture. Distillation is a unit operation, or a physical separation process, and not a chemical reaction....
  • Extractive distillation
    Extractive distillation

    Extractive distillation is defined as distillation in the presence of a miscible, high boiling, relatively non-volatile component, the solvent, that forms no azeotrope with the other components in the mixture....
  • Fractional distillation
    Fractional distillation

    Fractional distillation is the separation of a mixture into its component parts, or fractions, such as in separating chemical compound by their boiling point by heating them to a temperature at which several fractions of the compound will evaporate....
  • Herbal distillates
  • Steam engine
    Steam engine

    File:Steam-powered fire engine.jpgA steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines have a long history, going back at least 2000 years....
  • Theoretical plate
    Theoretical plate

    A theoretical plate in many separation processes is a hypothetical zone or stage in which two phases, such as the liquid and vapor phases of a substance, establish an Vapor-liquid equilibrium with each other....