Development of florasol extraction process for cedar oil

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This Engage Plus project will be between the Charpentier lab at UWO and All Natural Products Inc., who are a Canadian company focused on essential oil extraction in Bolton, Ontario. In our previous Engage project we setup a small scale batch extraction system (100 ml) to examine the extraction of cedar oil using floralsol co-solvent (H134a). The yield of cedar essential oil was investigated under various conditions of pressure, temperature, extraction time, solvent-to-sample ratio, ground or chopped cedar leaves, and dried or fresh leaves. The extracted oil was analyzed using GC-FID and GC-MS for thujone and fenchone content which are the two main components of cedar. The results showed that florasol extraction using R134a is a viable approach, providing significantly higher yields of oil and a better ratio of essential oils than steam distillation. The Engage Plus project will focus on examining this extraction process in a 7L extraction system, which will more closely examine a potential commercial system. A design of experiment (DOE) approach will be examined to compare optimum conditions to those previously examined in the small batch system. In addition, various process parameters will be examined including solvent recycle and how extraction basket dynamics including how trays are positioned and how much chopped cedar can be placed on each to optimize mass transfer. The goal of the project is to indicate the feasibility of florasol extraction and to determine the optimum parameters for potential commercial adoption.