Essential Oils help

Keato · 10 Dec 2017

Not entirely sure which section to put this post in as its scroll saw related but not directly.

I've been saving the fine sawdust from different woods (separately so its as pure as I can get it) and have many different types, sandalwood, oak, maple, Palo Santo & many more but I wondered if there is anyone out there that has managed to extract oils from the sawdust we make?

I've been looking at distillation setups, even seen the Smart Still by Goodlife. Though I'm not too sure, it looks more suited for alcohol & water even though it says its for essential oil extraction.

Has anyone else plunged into the essential oil extraction business from their waste sawdust?

Cheers

Rorschach · 10 Dec 2017

What do you want to do with it?

Keato · 10 Dec 2017

Well, extract the scent from the wood.

similar to putting pine needles in a still to extract the pine scent.

Bm101 · 10 Dec 2017

If I was making a still I'd want 80% proof coming out the other end. Each to their own of course.
There was a guy a while back asking about how to distill wood aromas from sawdust into (tbh) I don't know what. Might be worth a search.

ED65 · 10 Dec 2017

Wouldn't you need masses of the raw material in order to yield any useful amount? They put bushels of lavender into the extractor when making lavender essential oil. How much of some of the woods do you have?

You can certainly extract some scent (and flavour if you wanted) from plant matter in the same way you'd make flavoured boozes like gin, all it takes is long soaking. The higher the proof the better the extraction so pure grain alcohol would give the best results, and with the lowest dilution.

Rorschach · 11 Dec 2017

If this is just for fun then go for it, if you have any actual use for the product then I would suggest you are better buying it, not expensive to buy pure essential oils and a little goes a very long way in making perfumes etc.