An analysis and comparison of two essential oils extraction methodologies for lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus (DC.) Stapf)

Abstract

Lemongrass from the species of citratus have been used in this research in order to anaylze and compare two extraction methodology for extracting essential oils from lemongrass. The two methods involved were steam distillation and maceration extraction. Control method for this research was steam distillation. There are three types of essential oils were produced by these two methods, which produced from air dried lemongrass leaves, direct heating lemongrass by using drying oven with temperature of 60°C, and essential oils from fresh lemongrass leaves. The six samples were labelled as A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, where A and B represent maceration extraction, and steam distillation, respectively. The samples were analyzed using gas chromatography technique to analyze the citral content and other chemical composition exist in those samples which can be used to compare the quality and quantity of the essential oils produced by these two different methods. The steam distillation showed the better essential oils quality in terms of citral and chemical composition when compared to essential oils produced by maceration method. The essential oils extracted from fresh lemongrasss leaves by steam distillation process contained 93.68% citral. In contrast, the oil produced through maceration extraction was found to be infusion oil and the lower essential oil quality with only 37.03% citral content at the highest value, where the standard composition for commercialized essential oil should contain at least 70% citral. Therefore, steam distillation was found to be a preferred technique in producing better quality essential oils in industry today.