How do you distill an essential oil heavier than water?
This is a heavy oil separator and what we’re distilling here is, as you can see here, this is clove stem. Let me show you a little bit of this clove stem if I can. That's the stem from clove trees. Okay, what happens when you distill clove leaf, clove stem, or clove bud, you get a heavy oil which is heavier than water. That means the oil is going to sink instead of rise to the surface. So, the way that this separator is established is the distillate comes in here. As you can see the water in here, you can take a peek, take a look at the water. The distillate is coming in here, it’s entering this container. This is a wall between this container and this container. At about this height on this wall is a hole. And when the oil, its sinking to the bottom, when it reaches this level, it goes into this container. And then, at the end of the day, they can remove the oil by using the pipe in the bottom. So, that's a heavy oil separator for making essential oils that are heavier than water. Thank you very much.
Video taken while on an aromatic study tour through Kerala India at D.V. Deo Industries distillery, organized by Founder Dorene Petersen of The American College of Healthcare Sciences (ACHS)