Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / How to separate oil from water

How to separate oil from water
19:19:10 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Iggymydog:

How do I remove plant oil from water?

im making essential oil and need to sepreate the oil from the water. I dont have a filter. but i do have some questions...

1) does oil eveporate?
2) oil and water dont mix and oil freezes at a lower temp then water so can i freez them to seprate them?
3) does puting a plant in boiling water for a few hours bring out the oils?"


19:58:12 Apr 15th 09 - VU Admin:

"  Your best bet is probably just to let the mix of oil and water sit for a while, at least an hour or two, until it separates out, then skim the oil off the top.

Regarding your specific questions:

1) That depends on the oil. Plant "essential oils" are usually a mixture of many different compounds, some of which will evaporate at lower temperatures than water does, some of which won't. Evaporation is probably not the way to go.

2) If you freeze your liquids, the ice will be almost pure water. This will indeed let you skim off the water pretty easily. Watch out, though -- that will leave anything that was dissolved in the water behind.

3) It's more likely to destroy them, I'm afraid. The aromatic compounds valued in essential oils tend to decompose when heated that much.

From: Yahoo Answers


21:27:02 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Pineapple:

ROFL Zeta <3


21:31:23 Apr 15th 09 - Lord Wraith The Hermit:

Could I ask what the whole charade was for?


21:46:28 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Troll:

My suggestion is that you can centrifuge it to separate it into two layers.     

The plant oil with un-saturate fatty acids will not be frozen easily.

Which part do you want to recover?  Water or oil ?


21:52:06 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Troll:

Try this;

Centrifuge the sample mixer first.  You should have two layers, upper layer is oil and low layer is water. 

Freeze the sample, then the water layer will be frozen but not the plant oil layer.  Using the pippet to take out the liquid plant oil. 

let the water to be defrozen. 


23:20:08 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Tpknight:

i thought oil was non polar and water was polar..those two separate..


23:31:57 Apr 15th 09 - Lady Loud Tone:

*Wonders wtf is going on*


23:43:07 Apr 15th 09 - Mr. Troll:

oil has polar head and nonpolar tail.  That will form lipid bilayer on the surface of water.


00:04:03 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Rambutan:

  but the exposed surface of the oil is nonpolar, and the structure of the polar water molecules interacting with the nonpolar oil creates an easy boundary without complicated methods.  :/ 

    hooray for integrated physics and chemistry class  -_-


00:14:19 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Troll:

The polar head is exposed outside in lipid bilayer.  The cell member is one of the example.


00:15:57 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Troll:

try this website

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_bilayer


00:20:13 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Seloc:

Actually I agree with Wraith. Why?


00:26:08 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Troll:

ya why??


02:04:19 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Draik:

i was gna go with distillation :S or even simple separation since oil and water have a well defined boundary


02:04:30 Apr 16th 09 - Lord Stewie Griffin:

Lmao....zeta's got the best answer! xD


07:41:54 Apr 16th 09 - Lord Wraith The Hermit:

Let me rephrase cos I'll bet none of you have any idea what happened..
Iggy posted a link to a Yahoo question, that already had the answer. Admin just posted the question in Iggy's post and the answer already on Yahoo underneath in his own post....


07:46:44 Apr 16th 09 - Mr. Rambutan:

    I'll bet you seriously undervalue the intelligence of this community.... or seriously overestimate your own.


07:52:30 Apr 16th 09 - Lord Wraith The Hermit:

The first one :P But its true though >.< How are they meant to know what happened? I'm just explaining and asking... why??


08:13:32 Apr 16th 09 - Lord Stewie Griffin:

Thank you for explaining Wraith.

P.S - You think we are that stupid? ='(


13:49:16 Apr 16th 09 - VU Admin:

OT:

He kept *beep*ming that link and when I deleted the threads I thought "hey, that's not a bad question", so I saved one thread and moved it from Politics to General talk.
Then I though, "hmm, that's a bad topic". It was something like "I need ur help", so I changed it.
Then while I was on it, I also edited his post and posted the reply from Yahoo  with a link to the Yahoo page.


16:23:03 Apr 16th 09 - Sir Santa:

Zeta controls all of us! :O


01:51:53 Apr 17th 09 - Prince Validus Septim III:

O.O

Nice one...yeah...

*is afraid of what could happen to his threads*


02:12:47 Apr 17th 09 - Demonic Entity:

why not "soap" it out of the water aka shake it violently? if the oils have a polar and non-polar part, it should build enough bridges and create enough bubbles, then scoop off the bubbly part...or just wait a looong time until it all layers out by itself and scoop off each of the formed oil-layers...or just slow-centrifuge it so it'll speed that process up a bit...or perhaps electrophoresis?

question is...are we creating a new kind of drug by extracting plant-oils?!


02:38:41 Apr 17th 09 - Trigger Happy Mad Man:

It is oregano..... Yeah that's it .... Oregano....


05:58:12 Apr 17th 09 - Mr. Rambutan:

       You know what's awesome?   weed pizza.   You just get take and bake pizza, then you put some pot on it and bake it.   (make sure to break up and de-seed your pot first :O )    


23:50:44 Apr 17th 09 - Lord Primate Death:

ALLOW OIL TO RISE...USE TEASPOON TO SKIM SURFACE!


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