Essential oil, also known as ‘essences’, is extracted from various parts of plants, such as flowers, fruits, roots, and barks. With the help of various extraction methods, essential oils are prepared. It offers an excellent aromatic effect as essential oils have curative properties. Since the ancient times, essential oils are adored among many cultures for their great healing benefit. In this article, we will discuss some useful and interesting information on essential oils.

Botanical Material Used

A wide variety of botanical materials are used to prepare essential oils. Not only flowers, but other different parts of these curative plants are equally beneficial, such as, leaves, stems, roots, twigs, buds, barks, seeds, fruits, etc. In practice, a large quantity of botanical materials is actually needed to prepare essential oils. This is mainly because in most of the cases these plants have very low amount of oils in their oil-specialized cells. When you are interested in knowing about the varied applications of essential oil, comprehensive information about botanicals is needed.

Common Information on Essential Oil

Mother Nature knows about our problems better than any one else and offers us the best available measure to combat against our problem, nature offers us the best solution than any artificial products. There are a wide number of essential oils available in the marketplace. Some of them are basil, chamomile, cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, geranium, ginger, jasmine, lavender, lemon, lemongrass, lime, myrrh, pine, rose, sandalwood and many others.

Various Extraction Methods

Information on essential oil seems to be incomplete without a basic understanding of the extraction methods involved. The choice of extraction method is largely dependent on the type of botanicals used in the procedure. The most commonly used method used in the extraction procedure involves distillation. During this type of extraction method, volatile solution is first vaporized and then the vapor is converted back into liquid to ensure the natural purity. Water distillation, steam distillation and hydro diffusion are the methods used under distillation process.

Apart from distillation process, expression is another extraction method used to extract essential oils from botanical materials. This method is typically used to extract citrus based essential oils. Sponge expression, Écuelle à piquer and machine abrasion are commonly used under expression technique. In addition, solvent extraction is another extraction method. Maceration, enfleurage, solvent and hypercritical CO2 are the methods used under solvent extraction technique.

Application of Essential Oils

When you are looking for useful information on essential oils, quite obviously you must be interested in knowing about its beneficial application for us. You can use essential oils for different purposes like air fresheners, bathing, massage oils, hair care, steam inhalations, flea repellent, and many others. When we talk about its application as a health care product, the possibilities are simply endless. In addition, essential oil can work effectively as mood elevator. With the beautiful and elegant essence of essential oil, you can feel refreshed easily.