I'm water-distilling essential oils from CO2-extracted plant resins in a 100-liter stainless steel pilot distillery. Oil quality has been acceptable, but could be better. To achieve commercially viable yields, long distillation cycles are required, which tends to add undesirable oxidation products. The target oils vaporize at about 70 C.
I'm wondering if a rotary evaporator would work well for these oils. With the advantage of vacuum, lower temperatures could be used, thus less oxidation. Any thoughts on this or other means of effectively separating oils from plant resins without using volatile solvents?
