9, Extraction & distillation

Making perfume

Of course potions are used to please our sense of smell as well. For thousands of years, people have collected the aromatic oils of plants and seeds in order to make sweet-smelling waters and perfumes. But they had to squeeze great quantities of them to get just a few drops of oil, and the scent of the oil did not last very long.

Perfume making is one of the older forms of chemistry. Perfume makers soon realized that, by adding other ingredients to a plant's essential oils, not only could less oil be used, but the essential oil's scent would last longer.

You will need:

  • Small jars or vials with lids (there’s 2 in the set and you can add more)
  • Rubbing alcohol
  • Popsicle stick
  • Cotton swab
  • Tweezers
  • Paper towel
  • 30ml or 1/8 cup sample of each: fragrant rose petals, gardenia blossoms, orange-tree (or lemon-tree) leaves, eucalyptus leaves, pine needles, mint leaves, and whole cloves
  • Tape or marking pen for labelling

Procedure

  1. Press as many plant and flower samples into 30 ml or 1/8th cup vessel as you can. Place each sample in its own jar.
  2. Except for the cloves, crush the samples as finely as you can with the popsicle stick.
  3. Add 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of rubbing alcohol and continue crushing.
  4. Add about 10 cloves to one of the jars and then add alcohol.
  5. Puts lids on all the jars, and allow them to sit on a warm place for about a week.
  6. After a week, open one of the jars and dip in the cotton swab. Lift the swab towards your face, and fan the air around the moist tip so that the odour reaches your nose.
  7. Dab the moist tip against the back of your wrist, then allow the spot to dry. Smell it.
  8. Use the tweezers to remove a sample of the plant material, and let it dry on the paper towel. Smell it.

What should you notice?

The moist cotton swab had a strong alcohol scent mixed with the plant scent.

After you allowed the liquid to dry on your skin, your skin had only the plant scent and no alcohol odour.

The sample of dried plant has little or no scent.

What's going on.

Alcohol dissolves the aromatic oils in plants so that the oils are removed from the plant tissue, suspended in the alcohol, and preserved. Alcohol also evaporates very quickly when exposed to air. When you placed a sample of homemade perfume on your wrist and exposed it to the air, the alcohol dried quickly, leaving behind only the aromatic oil.