Comparison of kinetic models of oil extraction from sandalwood by microwave-assisted hydrodistillation

Sandalwood and its oil, is one of the oldest known perfume materials and has a long history (more than 4000 years) of use as mentioned in Sanskrit manuscripts. Sandalwood oil plays an important role as an export commodity in many countries and its widely used in the food, perfumery and pharmaceuticals industries. The aim of this study is to know and verify the kinetics and mechanism of microwave-assisted hydrodistillation of sandalwood based on two models. In this study, microwave-assisted hydrodistillation is used to extract essential oils from sandalwood. The extraction was carried out in ten extraction cycles of 15 min to 2.5 hours. The rate constant, the equilibrium extraction capacity, and the initial extraction rate were calculated using the two models. Kinetics of oil extraction from sandalwood by microwave-assisted hydrodistillation proved that the extraction process was based on the second-order extraction model as the experimentally done. The second-order model was satisfactorily applied, with very high coefficients of correlation (R2 = 0.9961), showing that it perfectly described the process.