ext ration method for pine oil content in a commercial cleaner?

Question

Can anyone suggest a method for the determination of 85% pine oil in a commercial cleaner? I originally put a 500 gram sample on a rotoevaporater only to retrive erroneous results ,which I belived were due to the tallow present in the solution. Therefore, I think if I can extract the tallow from the solution prior to evaporation, I can achive a correct representation of the turpine in question. But I am afraid that finding a method is a bit dauting.Please any ideas?? where I can locate a usable method?? thanks to all who answer!

Answer 1

First off, Wow! what a specific and highly technical Q. Thanks for being detailed.

So you figure the turpine is partitioning into the tallow? Sounds reasonable.

If you are trying to get the tallow out, how about cooling the sample until the tallow freezes? It will have a freezing point range since it is not a single molecular weight (think of butter), but within 10C or so, most of it will precipitate out.

Decant off the supernate liquid and consider rinsing with a cold solvent to recover turpine residue.

Does your evaporator have multiple stages? I'm thinking of difficult separations in a distillation column. The more stages, the better the separation.

In that vein, I am a big believer in random-dump packing versus plates and trays (especially since you'll be cobbling this together yourself!). A long, long tube with glass beads in it, insulated very well and with a slight heat source at the bottom and your vacuum extraction at the top. Introduce the mix in the middle, the liquid tallow will come off the bottom. Turpine off the top.

Editted: Oh, right, this is chemistry, not ChemEng - you are doing batch, not continuous process. So distill in a retort with a super long packed column. Keep the heat rate very low, keep the column insulated and play with the operating temperature until you get the best separation.

Good luck.