Extraction of volatile oil from Cymbopogon citratus / Nor Zur Ain Zakaria

Cymbopogon citratus commonly known as lemongrass which widely used
over many years for several purposes such as in medicine, cooking fragrance,
aromatherapy and many more. This study aimed to evaluate the extraction of
essential oil from fresh. rhizome and leaves of C. citratus and its chemical
composition with the different solvent used (hexane and dicholoromethane).
The essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation process followed by
solvent extraction and rotary evaporator. The bioactive compounds of C.
citratus have been tentatively analyzed with the aid of gas chromatographymass
spectrometry (GC-MS). Different part of lemongrass used gives the
different amount of essential content. Rhizome part of C. citratus showed the
significant effect in its essential oil content and revealed the higher presence
of chemical compound compared to leaves. Analysis of oil revealed the
presence of ten compounds in leaves and fourteen compounds in rhizome
respectively with different solvent Dicholoromethane showed the marked
effect on the proportion of the various components compared to hexane. (ὰ citral
was found to be the major compound in leaves part with the percent of
similarity index (76.2% and 75.3%), whereas C. citratus rhizome obtained
epoxy-linalooloxide as its major compound (81.1% and 82.6%) even the
different solvent used in its extraction (dicholoromethane and hexane).