Essential oil from citral thyme variety Slava

Genka Zhekova

Abstract: Essential oil from citral chemotype thyme, yield and component composition has been studied. Dynamic of distillation and dynamic of main compounds has been tracked down. Essential oil, obtained by water distillation had the main components geraniol – 25.31%, geranial – 8.33%, geranyl acetate – 33.95%, nerol + neral – 11.39%, β-caryophyllene – 3.79% and α-bisabolol – 1.30%. Geraniol had the negative correlation dependence with the values of geranial and geranyl acetate and positive with β-caryophyllene. Distillation dynamic showed that 95% of essential oil distilled to 50 minutes and the oil was most intensive separated to 20 minutes – 73.8%. The unsaturated alcohols were the high quantity in essential compound at the beginning of distillation, followed of esters, while the regular distribution of sesquiterpenes, unsaturated alcohols and esters was observed in essential oil fraction at 90 minutes.

Keywords: citral chemotype; distillation; dynamics; essential oil; thyme

Date published: 2017-01-27