Hydrolytic Maceration and Cold Fat Extraction

A. K. Singh
Extraction of active constituents from raw material is an important and one
of the most critical steps in order to maintain desired phytoconstituents.
Excellent active constituents will give an excellent quality product for some
food, flavors, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. A suitable method for
extraction is very important in the development of natural products. A very
simple extraction, like we do every day is when you brew your coffee in a hot
water, which tannins and caffeine were extracted from coffee beans into hot
water. There are numbers of extraction techniques that can be use to extract
desired constituents from plants. The choice among them is due to
physicochemical properties and stability of the phytoconstituents to be
obtained. The present article deals with extraction by hydrolytic maceration,
expression and cold fat extraction.
1. Hydrolytic Maceration
Hydrolytic maceration is a method which refers to preparation of
solution by soaking a plant material with various suitable solvent,
vegetable oil, or water. The differences with percolation is depends on
the flow of solvents through bulk material. The rate of extraction
depends upon the following:
The rate of transport of solvent into the mass to be leached.
The rate of solubilization of soluble constituents into solvent.
The rate of transport of solute out of the insoluble material and
from the surface of the insoluble material into the solution.
In this process, a solid material is placed in a closed bottle and then
add the suitable solvent (menstruum). After that, this process is
allowed to stand for a long time which varying from several hours to
days depends on how long took the solvent to menstruum all the
constituent with diffuse through materials cell walls and dilute them.
Sometimes adding an alcohol was needed prior to prevent microbial
growth.

2. Expression
Essential oils are mostly obtained by distillation in different plant
parts. However, a few essential oils such as citrus oil which present in
citrus peel are, obtained by expression, in order to give a product with
superior quality. This type of oil will give a small yield of oil and does
not represent of oil that occurred originally in the plant, if obtained by
distillation process. Its due to the long action of heat which leads to
hydrolysis, polymerization, and resinification that decompose the
substances in oil.
In citrus plants, the citrus peel contains numerous of oil sacs and
glands, where the citrus oil contained, and this is a basic reason why
expression technique is the most suitable method for extracting a
citrus oils. And also there is a albedo, which on maturation stage will
elongated and branched, which give the ripe peel spongy texture. This
spongy layer plays an important role in this technique, but it easily
absorbs the oil that ejected from expression and hold it with greater
tenacity, which makes the fruit peel needed to soak in water first
before being expressed because spongy layer will absorb the water
instead of oil, which makes the process will exerted an oil and water
emulsion.
2.1. Process of Expression
2.1.1. Hand Process
In this process, the fruits are cut divided in two pieces. The
fruit pulp removed by sharp edged spoon and then peel
immersed in water for several hours and finally pressed by
hands. First, hold a sponge in left hand and place it in a
wooden crossbar, place the peels, and then place the other
sponge above it and squeeze the sponge. This process
requires much labor and the yield of this method is 50%-70%

of the total oil present in the peel. The quality of oil obtained
from hand pressing is near to the quality present in fruit peel
2.1.2. Equelle Process
Equelle is a process which using a shallow brass-nailed
bowl of copper with a hollow central tube. The fruits is rolled
by hand with some pressure and exerted a water oil emulsion
which separated by decantation.
2.1.3. Hand Machines
In this process, the peel is placed or trapped in two sponge
by hand and fitted with a funnel through which oil and watery
material pass to receiving vessels.
2.1.4. Sfumatrici and Pelatrici
Sfumatrici is a machines which treat only the peel after
removal of juice and pulp, while pelatrici is a same process but
with the whole fruit. Special sfumatrice is a roller type machine
which fruit peel is bent and pressed to expel the maximum
quantity of oil. The emulsion is filtered by wool or sponge to
yield water and oil separation mixtures.
Pelatrici is a whole fruit processing. These machines crush
whole fruit and separate oil and aqueous phases by distillation
or centrifugation. Oil is removed by lightly punctured the
surface of fruit with a million sharp stainless steel points in
rotating rolls. There is also a Food Machinery Corporation(FMC)
Whole Fruit Extractor which extracts citrus oils from the whole
fruit without any mix of emulsion extract and fruit juice. FMC
juice extractor is equipped with two inter-meshing jaws which
encompass the fruit, crushing it between them, and the juice
will exits through a mesh skin. The peel then crushed, so that
oil will expelled and the emulsion is separated by
centrifugation. This process is give the odor of cold pressed oil
is true in nature and similar to that of the oil present in fruit.
3. Cold Fat Extraction
Some high-price essential oils from jasmine, tuberose, and
gardenia are only produce a small quantity of oil and cannot be

obtained by distillation methods, because the oil components were

thermolabile and yield a very small quantity of perfume. The oil from
these type of flowers will produce high yield perfume quantity with cold
fat extraction method
Cold fat extraction or enfleurage basically using fat as medium
for extraction. fats possess a high power of absorption of volatile oil, if
there is a contact with flowers, it will absorbs the perfume and leave
the flower exhausted. The important thing from this method is the
quality of fat base which leads to quality of flower oil. It must be
odorless and proper consistency. If the crops (fat) is too hard, it will
hardly absorbs the perfume because the flowers not have a sufficient
contact with it and the oil yield will be poor. If the crops is loose, it may
retain adhering on the flowers and difficult to removing the exhausted
flowers. Two part of lard and one part of tallow is a suitable mixture of
good consistency of corps that still used in perfume industries.
In this method, fat was placed in a square wooden frame glass
named chassis and flowers will placed on a fat surface and the
chassis were piled one above the other, the chassis form an air-tight
compartment with a layer of fat on the upper and lower sides of each
glass. Every morning the exhausted flowers will be removed and
replace it with new fresh pick of flowers, and this step will repeat until
the fat is highly saturated. And then the fat was collected by spatula
and dilute it with solvent like alcohol which extracts the oil from fat.
After that, separate the solvent with filtering the fat with freezing the
fat. These used fat from enfleurage process is called pomade that used
in several cosmetics products. The mixture of oil and solvent which
called extrait were distillated or evaporated until the flower oil were
obtained.