Purification of plant extracts and essential oils

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Rotary evaporators are used to purify plant extracts and essential oils from natural products. They can extract the desired compound from the mixture, resulting in a more concentrated and pure product.

Distillation of complex mixtures
Rotary evaporators are useful for distilling complex mixtures. They can separate the various compounds in a mixture, allowing you to isolate the desired compound.



How does this work?
A rotary evaporator, or "rotavap" in lab jargon, is a tool used in a chemistry lab to remove a volatile solvent from a liquid mixture.

The rotary evaporator operates on the general assumption that the boiling point of the solvent is significantly lower than that of the surrounding liquid. It is also assumed that the compounds in the bahrain number data liquid are temperature sensitive; otherwise, the solvent can simply be evaporated.

A rotary evaporator works by creating a vacuum in a rotating glass flask. What does this do? Let's go back to school physics and chemistry.

All matter in the universe exists in three (technically four) states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Which state a molecule is in depends on A) the physical conditions of the system it is in, and B) its intrinsic chemical properties. Of the physical variables, the most important to us are changes in temperature and pressure. Most industrial extraction procedures are carried out inside solid containers whose walls do not expand or contract (we hope); therefore, changes in volume are considered negligible.

Pressure and temperature are related linearly; doubling the temperature (on the absolute zero, or Kelvin, scale) will double the pressure (assuming the volume remains constant). Thus, reducing the pressure by applying a vacuum also reduces the boiling point required to evaporate the volatile solvent.