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Resource Book for Sixth-Form Practical Chemistry
Experiment 9
Isolation of the Essential Oils from Common Spices and Spectroscopic Analysis of Their Major Constituents
Whole cloves | |
Cinnamon barks | |
Cinnamon barks ground into small pieces | |
Cinnamon barks soaked in ethyl ethanoate | |
Heating the cinnamon barks in refluxing ethyl ethanoate (solid-liquid extraction) | |
After heating under reflux for 20 minutes, the essential oil of the cinnamon barks was extracted into ethyl ethanoate | |
The decanted ethyl ethanoate solution containing the essential oil of cinnamon | |
Drying the organic solution by anhydrous magnesium sulphate | |
Removing the magnesium sulphate powder and other solid residue by simple filtration | |
The solid residue remained in the filter paper | |
The filtrate: the dried solution of the essential oil of cinnamon in ethyl ethanoate | |
Removing the organic solvent (ethyl ethanoate) from the solution | |
The essential oil of cinnamon collected as yellowish oily residue (the white/gray solids are anti-bumping granules) |
2004 Department of Chemistry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong