Distillation Process Lavender Oil Steam Extraction Separation Pressure Cooker Still for £10 Part 2

Part 2
Extraction of Lavender / Plant Oil Using an Inexpensive / Cheap Modified Pressure Cooker for Steam Distillation. Mine cost £7.50 for copper pipe and brass coupling. The pressure cooker was free from a friend. See Part 1 here: http://youtu.be/r8-zxWKAVK8 The video explains and shows how you can change a pressure cooker into a DIY still to make home made essential oils Essential oils are highly concentrated, volatile oils that can be extracted from aromatic plants. Their use dates back to ancient times, and their wide variety of therapeutic, medicinal and culinary uses has ensured their continued popularity. About 700 different kinds of plants contain useful essential oils. Essential oils can be very expensive, but they are cheap to distil at home. This guide provides full instructions on how to extract the oils using a simple inexpensive and effective water-and-steam distillation process. The still can also be used to produce your own distilled water for home use. Some people claim that drinking distilled water has improved their health. This still can also make alcohol from wines and beers, but a word of warning if you use it for alcohol, remember to discard the first 100 ml or so to remove methanol esters and ether, It is also recommended to let distilled spirits stand for a few hours without a lid fitted, so that these lighter spirits can evaporate away similarly to letting a good wine breathe. Remember also that it is illegal to distil spirits and sell them without a license in the U.S.A. and other countries.

Either locate a source of plant material that you intend to extract the essential oil from or grow your own.
Be observant when driving around and look for gardens filled with lavender and other herbs. Knock on their door and politely ask then if they would allow you to harvest their plants when they have come to the end of their cycle and will require tidying.
Here is a wonderful community spirited opportunity to help someone with a little pruning in return for keeping the flower heads for oil extraction.

You could also reward them with a sample of your oil.

Pressure cooker should have a valve in the top that can accommodate a connection. See video.

I used a straight 10mm pipe connector / union to fix a copper tube coil to the pressure cooker lid.

Cut a 1.5 inch / 44mm length of 22mm copper pipe, hammer it flat and drill a hole in the centre to match a 10 mm straight pipe compression coupling. These cost around £1.50 on Ebay including postage.

Seal washer with silicone and using the coupling nut secure to the lid of your pressure cooker with copper washer on outside.

Obtain a length of approx 3 meters or longer 10 mm copper tubing.Fill with kiln dried sand and hammer both ends closed.
This will prevent the pipe from buckling / kinking when you wrap it around the cylinder / chosen object to form your copper distillation coil. You coil will need to be shaped to locate into the pressure cooker with the coil submerged in a bowl filled with cold water, with the other open end in your collecting vessel.

Cut the closed ends off and empty the sand out once your coil is formed. Yes I know that was "Bloody obvious"

Other valves need to be sealed, unless you have the weights, which act as a pressure seal.

Mine didn't have weights so I sealed it with a nail, wrapping ptfe tape around it and pushed firmly into the open valve. Worked a treat.

Pressure won't build up so long as you don't have the gas turned up too high, because the fitted coil is open ended.

The copper coil connected to the pressure cooker should be submerged in a bowl filled with cold water. It is important to keep this water cold so regularly exchange 3-4 jugs of heated water from the bowl, with cold water from the tap. Failure to do this will result in your hydrosol becoming tainted and brown

Keep the gas down low too as too hot and the plant material will be forced into the tube, which again will taint the distillate.

Watch the video to learn more:

http://youtu.be/8_5fAMLJ6n4