Isolation of Indonesian Cananga Oil by Instantaneous Controlled Pressure Drop

The isolation of cananga oil by a new process, Instantaneous Controlled Pressure Drop (DIC), was investigated. This process consists in heating the dry cananga (Cananga odorata Hook. fil. et Thomson, forma macrophylla) flowers for a short time period by steam, followed by an abrupt pressure drop into a vacuum (about 5 kPa). This pressure drop provokes auto-vaporization of the volatile compounds, puffing of flowers, breaking of cell walls and cooling. The effect of the process parameters, namely number of DIC cycles (1–9), saturated steam pressure (0.2–0.6 MPa), and heating time (0.5–20 min) on the oil yield and oil composition was examined. The results indicated a significant increase of oil yield with increasing processing pressure and number of DIC cycles, however the total heating time was not a significant parameter. The DIC oil was compared with the oil obtained using steam distillation (SD). DIC exhibited better results than SD concerning rapidity (4 min versus 24 h), oil yield (2.74% versus 2.60%) and also oil quality.