1kg of rose essential oil requires as much as 4000 kg of rose petals

‘Aromatics’ have been used for religious, medicinal, and cosmetic purposes for thousands of years, in the ancient culture of India—as found in Vedic Literature—in ancient China, Egypt, Babylon, and in the Greek and Roman civilizations up to the Middle Ages, and found a revival in the 20th century with the French chemist Gattefosse and the French doctor Valnet, the fathers of the modern ‘aromatherapy’.

Historic records give us detailed descriptions of how aromatic plants have been used for fumigations, pills, powders, ointments and infused oils and give us interesting recipes for their use for the cure of many diseases.

Today we define ‘Aromatherapy’ as ‘the skilled and controlled use of purest, highest quality essential oils—the volatile substances of aromatic plants—to promote holistic psychological and physical health and well-being’.

The essential oil—‘the essence’, ‘life-force’, or ‘soul’ of the plant, is present in tiny sacs or globules (in the flowers and leaves of the plant) or in the fruits, branches, needles, seeds, root or rind of the plant and is obtained by the methods of steam distillation, or by expression or solvent extraction.

The method of distillation of essential oils is said to have been invented only about 1,000 years ago (by an Arabic physician named Avicenna), but vessels found in Egyptian tombs and a still in a museum in Pakistan—judged by experts to be 5,000 years old and belonging to the ancient Indus Valley culture—lead us think that it was already known in these advanced cultures, that this method was later lost and was then rediscovered.

Extraction of Essential Oils

The extraction of most essential oils is carried out by means of distillation. The plant material is loaded into the still, which is in effect a giant pressure cooker. Steam is passed under pressure through the plant material, and the heat causes the globules of essential oil to burst open. The oil quickly evaporates. The steam or water vapour and the essential oil vapour then pass out from the top of the still and along a pipe which is water cooled. This condenses the vapours back into liquids. It is then an easy matter to separate the water from the essential oil, since they don’t mix, and the essence naturally floats on top of the water. The average yield of essential oil from raw material is 1.4 per cent, which means that about 70 kg of plant material is required to produce 1 kg of essential oil. To produce 1 kg essential oil of lavender requires 160 kg wild lavender blossoms, and for 1 kg essential oil of roses as much as 4000 kg of rose petals are needed. That means a yield of only 0.025 per cent, which explains the high price of rose oil. (More...)