What are the advantages of steam distillation?

The method is suitable for extracting volatile, water-stable, water-insoluble or water-insoluble plant active ingredients that can be distilled by steam without being destroyed.

Disadvantages:

Steam distillation is only suitable for extracting volatile components that can be distilled by steam without being destroyed, not reacting with water, and insoluble or insoluble in water. Steam distillation method needs to heat raw materials, so it is not suitable for extracting components with unstable chemical properties.

Steam distillation refers to the extraction method of distilling plant raw materials containing volatile components with water, so that the volatile components are distilled with steam and separated by condensation. The method is suitable for extracting volatile, water-stable, water-insoluble or water-insoluble plant active ingredients that can be distilled by steam without being destroyed.

Generally speaking, steam distillation is divided into three forms; Water distillation, water distillation and steam distillation. When dealing with various aromatic plants, it is often necessary to pretreat the plant raw materials before distilling the essential oil. If it is a grass plant or the oil-producing part is flowers, leaves, buds, spikes, etc. Generally, it can be directly put into the distiller for processing; However, if the oil-producing area is rhizome, it usually needs to be washed, dried in the sun or dried in the shade, crushed, or even soaked in dilute acid and neutralized with alkali; In addition, some aromatic plants need to be fermented first.