Effect of ultrasonic temperature and water quantity on yield of lavender essential oil / Muhammad Aiman Hassan

Lavandula Angustifolia sp, also known as Lavender is a popular flowering plant for its colour and scent. The name lavender comes from the Latin word, 'lavare' meaning 'to wash'. Lavender plants have oily, narrow and aromatic evergreen leaves and bear dense spikes of small tubular flowers in summer. In ancient Rome, Greece, and Persia, it was used as a perfume in baths and laundry. Lavender is known as a 'healing agent' in Tibet
and India. These days, lavender is cultivated and the essential oils (EO) of its flowers are used in aromatherapy, massage oils, perfumes, cosmetics, detergents, powders, shampoo, soaps, and tea all over the world. Lavender Essential Oil has a wonderful sweet aroma and is usually steam distilled from Lavender plants. Ultrasonic-assisted Hydrodistillation (US-HD) is one of the methods that was invented and derived from traditional methods of extraction. The working principle of ultrasonication is it will destroy the cell tissue and lipid glands of the plant, making it easy to evaporate the essential oil out of the plant cell wall. Hydrodistillation was done by the Clevenger apparatus. It works by boiling, condensing and decantation to separate the oil. Despite all the previous researches, there are still various unknown factors that could affect the yield of EO and its component. Hence, the major objective to this paper is to determine the effect of sonication temperature and water quantity to the yield of essential oil extracted by US-HD method. Further analysis of EO is done by using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) method. Based on the result, it proves the hypothesis that the percentage yield, increases as the sonication temperature increases. Meanwhile percentage yield increases as the water quantity decreases. The highest percentage yield that was achieved is at sonication temperature 50°C and 500mL water quantity which are the highest sonication temperature and least water quantity among the parameters.