Transcription
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Poor Man's Chemist. In this video, we are going to be taking a look at doing steam distillation of sassafras oil. Now, sassafras is a tree. It's found all throughout the US. It's found pretty much all over the world. Um, you can find sassafras trees. Um, sassafras trees, you are—they're easy to spot because they have very distinctive-looking leaves and they have a very distinctive bark. The bark of sassafras trees is unusually brown. Now, you might think that all trees have brown bark, but in reality, almost all trees actually have gray bark. I know it's one of those things you don't really notice unless you look for it, but sassafras trees, the bark is a distinct brown color.
Um, this is a taproot that I dug out of the ground six months ago, maybe. I've had it for a long time, and you can see here the pattern that the bark has and the color that it has. So you can see that's distinctly not gray. Um, so that's a great way to identify them. Um, also, sassafras, from what I've seen, but I don't—this is just based on my observations and where I've actually been able to find these damn things—they tend to grow on a slope. Um, it seems like they prefer soil that is well-drained. Um, so you know, you might look for that if you're actually going out looking for these things.
Um, I would say this: if you're going to go out looking for sassafras trees to distill the oil out of the root bark—because, yeah, the oil actually comes out of the root bark that's on this thing—you don't need to be an ass and kill live trees. I mean, unless you're just in like a forest of sassafras where it doesn't matter, but um, I mean, I don't know, I have a very hard time finding these things. Can't imagine why. Um, so I mean, you can get the oil out of the root bark of trees that are dead, so long as they haven't been dead for years and years and years. I mean, the oil is going to stay trapped in the root bark, and it's going to be easier to dig up one that's been dead for several months or even a year, um, in order to just get it out of the ground. The way sassafras grows is that it will come down, and then it takes an almost 90-degree turn into the ground. Digging these [ __ ] out is not a lot of fun, as you can see, like this one broke. Um, I didn't even bother to get the rest of it since I only got this one to do this video. I've had it for like all this time.
Um, I've done this distillation once before, and um, I did—it was about, gosh, I came almost a year ago now, and this is the sassafras oil that I got from that particular run. Um, like I said, I've had it for almost a year. Um, if it goes bad, you can't tell by the smell. It still has that wonderful root beer type aroma. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's—I don't know, I don't have a use for it at all. Um, I just like the way it smells. I had thought about um, making some traditional root beer, but if wintergreen grows down here in the South, I haven't been able to find it. Um, so yeah, it's just kind of sat there on the shelf, and I haven't done anything with it. I don't really have a use for it, kind of like hormonal alkaloids. I don't really have a use for these things, but you know, natural products chemistry is interesting.
Um, so yeah, what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to shave all the root bark off of this thing, and um, the bark that's actually up in the trunk of the tree doesn't really have—you can smell the same smell; it still has the same sassafras type smell—but I've tried distilling oil from there, and I never really got much of anything. Um, I'm going to supplement this with—like I said, I did this once before, and um, back then I was able to get two of these things, and they were in better shape than this one—so I saved some of the root bark I didn't use then. I just dried it and powdered it, and so we're gonna add it to this so that there's a little bit extra, um, you know, just so we'll have something to show you at the end. So anyway, um, so yeah, don't be a dick and kill live sassafras trees unless there's just so many of them growing in that particular area that it wouldn't possibly matter. You know, come on people, sustainability—that's what counts. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this, and um, yeah, let's get started. All right, everybody. As you can see, I've been working at this already. All I'm doing is just taking a knife and scraping this off here. You can see here um, that this is the color of the actual wood that's underneath. The root bark is this here. Um, you can actually see it kind of looks a little oily here in this brown layer right here; that's the actual root bark. So anyway, and as I'm cutting this, I can smell the sassafras on it. I mean, it's just the smell of root beer keeps hitting me in the face, and it's wonderful. And like I said, this thing has been kicking around under the canopy for months now—months and months—so you know, these things really do retain the oil for a long time. So anyway, I just wanted to show you what it looks like. I'm probably going to go up to about here, maybe. I mean, basically, you just keep going until the smell really starts to taper off in intensity from where you're shaving it. I mean, you just kind of go by that, but anyway, I will come back when this is done and show you guys what it looks like.
All right, everybody, so this is my setup for steam distillation, and if it looks a little precarious, that's because it is. Um, but I mean, I really want to be able to do this this time with it going straight into a separatory funnel, just because that makes it a lot easier to separate. Um, if I wasn't doing this as a demo, I would probably be lazy and just have it go into a regular, you know, conical flask or round-bottom flask like I normally do, but I mean, this is the best way to do it, and since this, you know, I'm doing this to show you guys how it's done, I figured I would show you the best way to do it. Um, I mean, this will give you the best yield because you'll lose the least just through mechanical losses. Um, but I mean, it's not strictly necessary to do it this way, but anyway, so you can see I was able to get a good bit of material off that root. There is the root itself. You can see I cut—well, a good ways up it. Once you get up to where you start seeing the bark pattern, you really start to notice a drop-off in the smell, and quite frankly, I was also just kind of tired of hacking at that thing. Um, it does look really cool though, right? I mean, with that big hole all the way through it, I don't know, that just screams do something with it, but I don't really know what. Um, I, I have no woodworking skills. I wish I did. I don't know if I knew somebody that did, I would give it to him, tell him to make something cool out of it, but anyway, so there is all the root bark and the powder I showed you earlier, so it's all in there, and now all we're going to do—I'm just going to wrap this up in foil, and I'll wrap up the distillation head so that we can just, you know, you want to make it as efficient as possible. There's—this is a one-liter flask, and there's about 500 mils of water in there right now, so you know, you want to keep it like that. You don't want it to boil over, obviously. Um, that would be the end of the world. I guess you could just put it all back in the boiling flask and redistill it, but anyway, um, so yeah, I'm going to get the water started now, and we'll get this thing going.
All right, everybody, I just drained the liquid out of here for the first time, and as you can see, we've got a nice big glob of oil on top of our hydrosol. But when—uh, after I drained the hydrosol, I discovered that there is a whole lot of oil down here floating on top of it as well, and I think I can show you what's happening here. If I'm not a hundred percent sure why it's happening, but as droplets are falling here, um, there are little globules of oil that are sinking down to the bottom, and they're staying there. Um, I mean, I can understand why the oil would, you know, not mix with the water—why, I mean, it's clearly less dense than the water; it floats on the top of it—so why it's getting stuck down here at the bottom, I'm not really sure. Oh, there you go. You can see it—just little beads of oil just fall down here. So not a hundred percent sure what's going on with that, but something to be aware of when you're doing your own steam distillation of sassafras.
All right, everybody, our distillation is wrapping up here. Um, there's only very little oil coming over still—almost none at all, I don't think—so that was what I got in total, and it looks like—and I'll show you this guys later—but it looks like um, the verdict is that the oil is heavier than water. Um, it seems like I remember that now from last time. Um, I know it's so helpful, right? I remember it now. Um, but it is—it's when you actually look at this, and I don't know how well this is gonna show up—if you can really see it there—oh yeah, you kind of can—a lot of it is sunk to the bottom, and all that that was on the surface, if you just swirl it up, it'll all sink. So I'm tempted to just kind of let this sit overnight and see if it separates out to any appreciable degree before I try doing anything to separate it out. Yeah, I might try that, just see how that works out.
All right, everybody, it's the morning of the next day. You can see here, I've been separating this out here for a few minutes. I put it in the refrigerator overnight. That didn't do anything to deal with this hydrosol. So right now, what I'm doing is I am just separating out the essential oil here from the rest of the water, or the hydrosol, rather, and you can see—at least I hope you can—there are little, little bitty tiny globules of oil that are sticking to the glass. You can try tapping it or swirling it a couple of times, although it'll obviously disturb the oil that you've already got at the bottom there. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drain that out, and then um, I am going to put the cap on this thing, and then um, shake it up a few times and then let it sit again and see if I can't get those little globules of oil to sink to the bottom. So
All right, everybody, this is what I got off of it the first time. This is the oil I was able to just directly draw off this thing. I hope that's focused; I really do. So anyway, you can see it's not a whole lot, but I mean, I only did the base of a taproot, so I mean, that—we didn't—I didn't distill a whole lot of material to begin with. I mean, it's not unreasonable to expect there would only be a small amount of oil from it, which is fine. I mean, for our purposes here, that's not a big deal. Um, especially since I don't really have a use for this stuff after I'm done with this. So anyway, um, yeah, now when you look at this part here, you can see there are all kinds of little droplets of oil that are adhering to the glass, and if you're gonna go for a better yield, then you're definitely going to want to do something about that. As for what, I mean, you have a couple of options: you can try to add salt to this and increase the polarity of the water and, you know, create a real strong salt solution, and that can help break up the hydrosol and get all the oils to condense together; or alternatively, you can centrifuge it. That's another thing that you could do; or you could solvent extract it. That's another thing that you could do. Um, I'm gonna try centrifuging it and just see what that does and see, you know, if—how readily that works, um, because it might just be an easy way to deal with this without any other fuss. And if that doesn't work well, I don't know—like I said, I mean, you can extract it out into solvent, but then you would have to vacuum evaporate that solvent off, and that's just a whole lot of hassle, and I mean, just really don't want to go through all of that. I said if you want to do this distillation, which you absolutely shouldn't, but if you do, you can have fun making that work. Although if you did want to do that, like you could try dichloromethane or ether or even heptane or hexane. Any of those would be good choices. DCM or ether probably best because they're the easiest to remove, but it all depends on the solubility of the constituents of the oil in various solvents, and if there was, of course, one constituent that you were interested in in particular, like the safrole, then you would want to find what safrole dissolves in that isn't miscible with water and extracted into that. The safrole is the primary chemical that's responsible for that root beer-like odor. So I mean, if you are looking to extract the essential oil, that is the compound that is most responsible for the scent. So anyway, we'll centrifuge this, and we'll see how well that works, and then we'll come back.
All right, everybody, this is what I'm getting with the dichloromethane extraction. Um, I tried just a little bit. I just put some in there since I had recommended it. I figured I would try it and see how it did, just because, you know, I don't have a use for this hydrosol, and you know, I might as well use it all up experimenting with it, and it looks like that works. I mean, you can see it definitely extracted something out of there, so that would be the way—at least that's where I would begin with solvent extraction. However, that being said, I was correct in my assumption. Let me put these down here; maybe it makes it easier to see. Well, it might if they actually stood up on something. Come on, stop being difficult. Okay, there you go. Now you can see it. Centrifuging it worked beautifully—beautifully. This is less than five minutes at 4,000 rpms, and as you can see, it totally broke the hydrosol and sucked all the essential oil right down into there. So we know that solvent extraction is probably viable, but this is another one of those situations where I'm just forced to say, spend 50 bucks on a centrifuge. I swear it's worth every penny. Look at that! Look at that! Less than five minutes, and it's done. All you gotta do is pipette it out of there. So yeah, there you go. That's so awesome, y'all just have no idea, man. I, I've done essential oil distillations—okay, camera, come on—I've done them a lot in the past, and dealing with these [ __ ] hydrosols has been the bane of my existence. So um, yeah, knowing that you can just centrifuge it—who cares if you've got to put it into little tubes and centrifuge it? Who gives a damn? [Music] I swear that takes a lot less time and a lot less effort than trying to deal with solvent extracting this pain in the ass. So now you know the key. So yeah, again, spend 50 bucks on a centrifuge. If you're not going to be doing this, it's very important to have the right equipment for the things you're not doing. So anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have, please give it a thumbs up, or give it a thumbs down. Tell me, you know, you love it; tell me you hate it; whatever. Um, if you think I've earned it, please subscribe, and until the next video, I will see all of y'all later.
It occurred to me that some of you might be curious, so I just wanted to show you—this is the cadmium sulfate. It's drying in a vacuum desiccator over anhydrous magnesium sulfate. But there it is. Up until now, all it's taken are gloves to handle it, but after it comes out of here, it will be dry, and if it crumbles, it will generate dust. So yeah, this is one that I'm gonna bust out the respirator for because I don't wanna get cadmium poisoning. Um, just—don't wanna deal with that, and it's also carcinogenic, and if you breathe in the dust, it has a nasty tendency to cause lung cancer. So yeah, yeah, if I'm going to get lung cancer, it's going to be from doing things I enjoy, not not from this [ __ ]. So anyway, I just thought you all would enjoy seeing it. I mean, they're really—it's—that's why I ended the other video when I did, because there's just not much to see. It's just a white powdery, crusty stuff. We'll do some experiments with it though, y'all. I came across one in a prep handbook of preparative inorganic chemistry the other day where you can combine cadmium sulfate with zinc metal to produce powdered cadmium, and then you can react that with iodine and water to produce cadmium iodide, which—that could be cool, man—a way to make a cadmium halide without having to deal with all of that sublimation and vapors. And yeah, again, don't want to breathe the cadmium. So anyway, I just thought some of y'all might be curious about that, so there you go, people, and I hope you enjoyed it. Liked it? Give it a thumbs up. Please leave comments; I love the comments. Alright, bye-bye.