Academic literature on the topic 'Steam distillation'

The citrus industry is one of the most important economic areas within the global agricultural sector. Persian lime is commonly used to produce lime juice and essential oil, which are usually obtained by batch distillation. The aim of this work was to validate a patented continuous steam distillation process and to both physically and chemically characterize the volatile fractions of essential Persian lime oil. Prior to distillation, lime juice was obtained by pressing the lime fruit. Afterwards, the juice was subjected to a continuous steam distillation process by varying the ratio of distillate flow to feed flow (0.2, 0.4, and 0.6). The distillate oil fractions were characterized by measuring their density, optical rotation, and refractive index. Gas chromatography GC-FID was used to analyze the chemical compositions of the oil fractions. The process of continuous steam distillation presented high oil recovery efficiencies (up to 90%) and lower steam consumption compared to traditional batch process distillation since steam consumption ranged from 32 to 60% for different steam levels. Moreover, a reduction in process time was observed (from 8 to 4 h). The oil fractions obtained via continuous steam distillation differed significantly in their composition from the parent compounds and the fractions.

Syzygium aromaticum L. is an aromatic plant with a significant amount of essential oil (EO), which is used in food, medicine, for flavoring, and in the fragrance industry. The purpose of this study was to comparatively evaluate the chemical composition, yield, and antioxidant and antifungal activities of Syzygium aromaticum essential oils extracted by the conventional hydro-distillation, steam distillation, and the emerging superheated steam distillation methods. It was noticed that the extraction methods significantly influenced the yield, chemical composition, and antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of essential oils. The maximum yield was obtained using superheated steam distillation, followed by hydro-distillation and steam distillation. The antioxidant potential of EO extracts was evaluated following the scavenging of 2,2-dipenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radicals, hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity and ferric reducing power assays. Results revealed that EO extracted superheated steam distillation exhibited the highest antioxidant activity. GC-MS analysis depicted eugenol (47.94–26.50%) and caryophyllene (20.24–9.25%) as the major compounds of Syzygium aromaticum EOs. The antimicrobial activity of EO extracts was evaluated, via the resazurin microtiter plate assay, microdilution broth assay, and disc diffusion methods, against normal and food pathogenic bacterial and fungal strains. After comparative evaluation, it was observed that superheated steam extracted EO exhibited the highest antimicrobial potential. Overall, methodical evaluation disclosed that superheated steam distillation is an effective method to extract EOs from plant sources, with greater yield and promising biological activities.

Summary The interactions of heavy oil and injected steam in the mature steamflood at the Kern River Field have been extensively studied to gain insight into the effect of steam on compositional changes of oil during the recovery process and to provide input for compositional thermal simulation. Steam distillation behavior of this 13°API California oil between 300 and 467°F under a variety of process conditions, along with extensive analysis of distilled hydrocarbons were incorporated to give a more in-depth description of what is happening to the oil and what changes are occurring in the distillates or produced oil. This information was further integrated with analysis of the field distillate, "casing blow," to infer what is happening in the field. The results show that steam distillation is temperature dependent and more important than originally thought. The data developed in this study are a basis for improvement of numerical thermal models with potential for better designed steamfloods and reservoir management. The results may also impact certain logging techniques used in steamfloods and possible heavy oil upgrading techniques. Kern River oil is more than 10% distillable at 300°F and 15% distillable at 400°F in dynamic laboratory steam distillation tests at steam throughputs of four times the initial volume of oil. Distillate physical properties of density, viscosity, molecular weight, and hydrocarbon composition of the distillates changed significantly. Distillate properties increased in value with increasing steam throughput, and at higher temperatures. This information is important in the tuning of equations of state, including hydrocarbon-water interaction parameters for compositional thermal simulation. Analysis of the field distillate, "casing blow," showed properties similar to laboratory distillates at low steam throughputs. The observation of a light field distillate production in a mature steamflood compared to laboratory measurements implies that the casing system temperature is a major controlling factor in "casing blow" composition and quantity. Background The phase equilibrium behavior of reservoir fluids is an important phenomenon in petroleum production, particularly in enhanced oil recovery processes. However, phase behavior for heavy oils (<15°API) under steamflood has generally been felt to be unimportant or a minimal effect to be neglected.1 A major question exists about whether the phases and fluids in a steamflood are in equilibrium or not. Proper modeling of a reservoir production process would be expected to include knowledge of the phases and their equilibrium compositions. In heavy oil, devoid of significant C1 to C6 composition, it has been sufficient to treat the oil as a dead oil or a nonvolatile phase for steamflood modeling purposes. A history match numerical study2 of steamflood performance in the Kern River Field treated the oil as nonvolatile, and was conducted without the inclusion of hydrocarbon compositional effects. Through the classic works of Willman et al.,3 Volek and Pryor,4 and Closmann and Seba,5 steam distillation has been shown to be an important component mechanism in the overall steamflooding process.6–10 The practical limit of how much of a reservoir fluid can be distilled, is obtained in dynamic steam distillation experiments developed by Brown and Wu,11,12 extended by Hseuh, Hong, and Duerksen,13,14 and refined by Wu and co-workers.15,16 This body of work demonstrates that steam distillation is an operative mechanism in laboratory models, but it has been difficult to translate this to a quantitative contribution to the field recovery process of steamflooding. Laboratory steam distillation experiments have generally been conducted as dynamic tests, that may or may not be near equilibrium. Experiments near equilibrium with extensive analysis of the phases will yield values for the vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) ratios (K values), another way of assessing the importance of compositional changes in steamflooding. A major recent steam distillation study by Northrup and Venkatesan17 has been completed on the South Belridge oil. Compositional data from simple distillation and laboratory steamfloods of oils in the range 13 to 33°API, including Kern River oil, has recently been reported.18 The current report is an extension of that work to include analyses of produced field samples for the Kern River steamflood. Compositional reservoir simulators demand greater emphasis on obtaining more crude oil compositional data, which would be used as input into an equation of state (EOS) or to calculate equilibrium ratios, K values. An appreciable amount of incremental oil19,20 could be recovered by steamflooding due to steam distillation depending on the composition of the crude oil. The present work establishes laboratory data to facilitate such efforts. The EOS approach and table look-up for two-phase K values are applied in thermal numerical simulation models, even though they do not fully represent three-phase separation (steam distillation). A three-component system approximation was used by Coats and Smart21 to incorporate steam distillation effects by adding water as a component in the vapor phase. The compositional variations due to steam distillation cannot be fully described by Coats' model. A difficulty in this model is the lack of three-phase laboratory steam distillation data for high-temperature and high-pressure conditions. A future goal of this research is to obtain three-phase laboratory steam distillation data to better understand the effects of water and its vapor on the hydrocarbon separation processes at high-temperature and high-pressure conditions. This includes the investigation on both the pure hydrocarbon component/water systems and crude oil/water systems. The three-phase equilibrium ratios or K values determined from these laboratory investigations are necessary to accurately describe the effects of steam distillation in mathematical reservoir simulation. Experiment Steam Distillation Cell and Procedures. In order to describe the existing laboratory procedures, Fig. 1 is presented. This experimental setup is used to perform three different types of tests:Static system pressure test (SPT).Dynamic distillation test (DDT).Stagewise isochoric distillation test (SWID). The experimental apparatus is composed of the injection assembly (Ruska pumps and the gas bottles), the distillation cell assembly, the withdrawal assembly (condenser, separator) and the automation/data acquisition assembly. The steam distillation apparatus has been extensively described elsewhere.22

Novel integrated flow-based steam distillation and titration system with spectrophotometric detection was developed for determination of volatile acidity in wines. Using the system, the distillation procedure was carried out in an automatic manner, starting with introducing into a heated steam distillation module a sample and subjecting it to steam distillation. Under selected conditions, all the analyte was transferred to the distillate; therefore, the system did not require calibration. The collected distillate and titrant were introduced into the next monosegments in varying proportions, in accordance with the developed titration procedure, and directed to the detection system to record the titration curve. The titration was stopped after reaching the end point of titration. Procedures for distillation and titration were developed and verified separately by distillation of acetic acid, acetic acid in the presence of tartaric acid as well as acetic acid, tartaric acid, and titratable acidity, with precision (relative standard deviation) and accuracy (relative error) for both procedures lower than 6.9 and 5.6%, respectively. The developed steam distillation and titration systems were used to determine volatile acidity in samples of white and rosé wines separately and as the integrated steam distillation and titration system, both with precision lower than 9.4% and accuracy better than 6.7%.