Читать книгу Aromatherapy Workbook - Shirley Price - Страница 22

This is a fairly new method of extracting essential oils, introduced at the beginning of the 1980s, utilizing compressed carbon dioxide. The technology calls for very expensive, complicated equipment (initially three or four million pounds’ worth), which utilizes carbon dioxide at very high pressures and extremely low temperatures. With this method, more top notes, fewer terpenes, a higher proportion of esters (see chapter 3), plus larger molecules, are obtained. The aroma of the resultant oil is more like the essential oil in the plant, as many terpenes in a distilled oil seem to form during the distillation process, which also breaks down some of the acetates (esters) in the plant material.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) extracted essential oils are pure and stable and have no residue of CO₂ left in them. However, the therapeutic possibilities need to be verified for each oil on account of their different compositions and until there has been some research on this, it may be wise not to use them yet in aromatherapy.

At the moment the price is high; perhaps after a number of years, when the initial cost of the equipment has come down, the prices will be lower.