Extracting wax and oil

[British Red]

Thats exactly what I have, I have found a diagram that shows one like it now...

PS, sorry if I have kind of de-railed this thread a bit

Yup thats a farctional distillation column. The glass discs increases the surface area to allow the steam to condense and run back. The concentration of...errm..."stuff" increases higher up the column as thw water has condesed and run back into the heating vessel. You draw the steam off the side vent and return it to liquid state using the condenser. Bad Grandad

 

[anthonyyy]

Cwe're just trying to work out a really simple way of making the most of the available wax from when we're out and about.

Toddy

You can rig a simple steam distillation apparatus using a pressure cooker. Connect a coil of copper for an air condenser to the hole in the lid. Chop up yer plant matter add water and distil. This will extract small amounts of delicate "essential oils" without damaging them. Normally these will float to the top of the distillate. If you add salt to the distillate it will reduce the tendency to form an emulsion. Find some way of spooning off the top layer and there you have your essential oils mixed with water.



All this isn’t rocket science but it is science nonetheless. You don’t have to go quite as far back as alchemy any organic chemistry or biochemistry textbook practical manual will give you the information you need.

To obtain larger amounts of what you call “waxes” organic solvents are the best method. You run into problems when it comes to obtaining and using organic solvents. There are environmental and safety considerations. And they can be used in the production of narcotics and explosives.

The simplest method I can think of, offhand ,is: add hot water to your chopped up plant matter, a tablespoon of salt, filter (hot), heat again, allowing to cool and separating of the layer that forms on top with a spoon. This method will give a lower yield than more advanced methods and will also damage some of the more sensitive oils and essences.

 

[rich59]

I needed a lubricant for some hand made cordage and tried to follow the advice of waxing it. I started off with a candle, but got quite a flaky result. I then thought about wax in leaves and tried simply rubbing the leaves (a waxy laurel) on the cordage. The result was a pretty supple cordage that did the job I asked of it.

So, one way to extract wax from leaves is simply by rubbing them. The wax is in the out coat of the leaves.
But, I am intrigued by the possibility of directing the jet of hot stuff from a char cloth making tin into water and expecting to collect wax off the surface.

 

[Toddy]

Excellent So the addition of salt might help the process along......salt's not beyond mortal wit to obtain in the UK, the sea is everywhere around us ....so the whole thing becomes more feasible. I've been collecting more of the cones from bog myrtle, I'm going to do a trial and see if I get a better result. ]
The reason I mentioned the alchemy links was because the old ones use very basic equipment.

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[rich59]

I have spent a few days thinking about stuff knocking about my garden and shed that could be made into something that I could attempt to distill off wax from leaves. I eventually came up with making a hole in an old barbecue base, sticking a charcloth making tin (stuffed with leaves) through the hole, immersing the lower end of the tin in water and then lighting a fire in the barbecue around the top of the char tin.

The result? An oily layer on the water with a very bad burnt smell that has now got onto my fingers and won't wash off!!

I poured it into a water/ oil separator and got rid of the water. I was left with the very, greasy, burnt smelling layer (with loads of charred particles in it) smeared all round the separator.

Conclusion - although a very crude experiment I did prove that there is a significant amount of wax in waxy leaves that can be separated off.

It could most probably be done much better with propper equipment - one could probably capture the oil/ wax at an early stage before the other fractions come off at much higher temperatures.

 

[Fluxus]

Found naturally in the stones of cherries, plums and peaches, the cores of apples and the leaves of the laurel plant, cyanide evolved as a plant protection mechanism of grazing animals (interestingly, a number of bacteria, fungi and algae are also found to produce the chemical). Ingestion of moderate amounts of these natural substances cause headaches accompanied by mild heart palpitations, more than enough to steer animals – two-legged or four – clear. However, the Middle Eastern people of ancient times made the discovery that the distillation by evaporation of laurel leaves produced lethal concentrations of this innocent plant product. from http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A4113983

see above for a word of caution on attempted distillation of laurel leaves -
I thought I remembered this from a talk by an entymologist who used crushed laurel with a solvent to kill specimens for disection. seems my memory still has some capacity.
all the best
Flux

 

[rich59]

Thanks for the info. Yep, cyanide is a fact of life in living and in bushcraft. We must respect any new material or new preparation of a material and never assume something is safe to ingest.