Majari Magazine

From Castor To Dior

by Devy Nandya Utami on 04/01/09 at 1:49 pm | 2 Comments | |

J'adore by Dior

For a long time, jasmine has become one of the most important scents in perfumery industry. Some of the finest perfume producers in the world even launched statement-scent-perfumes like Jasmin by Guerlain and J’adore Les Jasmin by Dior. But amazingly, the jasmine scent itself doesn’t have to be extracted from real jasmines. For example, C7 aldehyde or heptaldehyde is mainly used in perfumery in the form of  jasmine aldehyde compound (alpha amyl cinnemic aldehyde).

Heptaldehyde is a chemical compound that is pyrolyzed from plant oil such as castor oil. Castor, mainly known in Indonesia as ‘jarak‘, has been one of the biggest non-gas commodity of Indonesian export for a long time. However, castors are exported only as seeds and oil.

The uses of heptaldehyde are:

1. As chemical intermediates for perfumes and flavors
2. As jasmine aldehyde compounds (alpha amyl cinnemic aldehyde) and coconut aldehyde for perfumery industries
   
3. Manufacturing of heptyl alcohol, heptonoic acid etc., which have subsequent usage in various industries
4. Rubber industry, in the preparation of vulcanization accelerators
5. As a solvent in rubber & plastic industries
6. As emulsifiers and plasticizers

Jatropha (Jarak)

Castor-seed processing to castor oil is like any other type of seed processing. Firstly, ripe castor fruits are harvested and left onto the sun to ease the seeds picking. Those seeds are dried to make it easily picked up from the castor fruits. The seeds are then washed and heated before finally conveyed into the extraction tube. The heating process is needed to coagulate protein and to release the oil so that the extraction process become more efficient. The heating process takes place at 80 Celcius in non-vacuum condition. Then, the drying process takes place at 100 Celcius degree with a constraint of percent of impurities at +/- 4%.

Meanwhile, castor fruits are conveyed into high pressure screw-press to produce first grade oil. During the process, waste is also produced. Oils are filtered and precipitated to separate impurities, which are known as foot. Foot is then fed back into screw-press as the oils are kept in a tank for purification. Waste is conveyed back into a ponder and then extracted with hexane or heptane solvent, or a mixing of both. The product is distilled and the solvent can be reused as solvent for other waste extractions while raw oil is produced and kept to be purified as well as first grade oil.

There are two methods of castor oil pyrolysis. The first method is the direct pyrolisis of castor oil while the second method is the synthetization of methyl ricinoleate through the methanolysis process from castor oil and continued with a thermal splitting process. It has been previously reported that the thermal splitting of methyl ricinoleate has some advantages over the direct splitting of castor oil because direct pyrolysis easily results in tarry materials and poisonous gas.

It is reported that the pyrolysis of castor oil at 400-400 Celcius degree under reduced pressure yields heptaldehyde and undecenoic acid in 16.0-24.0% and 17.0-35.0%, respectively [G. Das, R.K. Trivedi, and A.K. Vasishthat, J. Am. Oil. Chem. Soc., 66, 938 (1989)]. It is also reported that methyl ricinoleate is pyrolyzed at 558-638 Celcius degree under atmosphere yielding 25.8% of heptaldehyde and 45.7-44.6% of methyl undecenoate [G.-B. Han, Z.-Y. Liu, S.-L. Yao, and R.-F. Yan, J. Am. Oil. Chem. Soc. 73.1109 (1996)].

Castor oil has been produced in Indonesia since the Dutch colonization and is exported as lubricant material. In the Japanese colonization, Indonesians were forced to plant castor in order to produce lubricants for Japanese war equipments. After hundreds of years, we’re still exporting castor seeds and oils while in fact there are a lot more valuable materials can be manufactured from them. Dare to ask why?

References:
Handout kuliah Minyak dan Lemak oleh Dr. Tatang Hernas S.
Hu et al. Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol. 6, No. 4, July 2000, 238-241.

http://www.castoroil.in/extraction/extraction.html

http://www.castoroil.in/reference/glossary/heptaldehyde.html