I decided to change my project idea to something that has to do with my degree (Chemical Engineer). I was very confused at first, so I brainstormed with my grandfather who is a chemist, and he told me to work on improving a system of essential oil extraction. In the laboratory, we are often working with steam distillation (a method for distilling compounds which are heat-sensitive). I have decided to use this method to separate the essential oils. By the end of the process, we will be able to separate the oil from the water. Usually we do it by using micropipettes once the oil floats to the top and the water sinks to the bottom.

In steam distillation, the boiling flash is infused with steam, which carries the oil’s vapor into the distilling head and then into the condenser, where the oil and water co-condense. As an alternative, steam is generated in situ in the distilling pot. By the end of the process a mixture of water and oil will end up in the receiving flask. The process to separate the oil from the water is difficult, we usually use micropipettes to separate the oil as I previously stated. My project on the other hand will be, to make a conic vassal, that will be a substitute for the receiving flask. The vassal will have one entrance at the bottom of the vase where the hydrolate will enter the conical and an opening at the top with a ramp where the oil will self-extract itself into the collection cup. The essential oil rises to the top because it is less dense then the water plus the conical shape itself allows for the formation of an additional separating force that helps the rising of the oil droplets. This force is a result from the differential between upward and downward velocities. Upward velocity increases as the internal section of the separator turns smaller and, on the other hand, downward velocity decreases as its diameter increases. The conical vase will also be designed with a cylindrical baffle on the interior to trap the incoming oil and water mixture, which improves the separation of the oil droplets from the water.

I discovered this project by fallowing this university “Instituto Federal de educação, ciência e tecnologia”. They did a similar project as you can see by clicking on the link.

The whole project approximately cost me and should cost anyone who does a similar project around $200. The majority of the materials used came from fab lab and the distillation equipment I ordered online.   

Bill of materials:

Distillation equipment $150.23
MDF board 9mm $10
MDF board 3mm $4
ATtiny 85 $1.23
Bluetooth HC-05 $8.22 (R$32.90)
Sensor $ 6.25 (R$24.90)
ABS material $21.25 (R$85.00)


Distillation equipment:

Instead of using the 2000 ml round bottom flask placed at the end of the distillation equipment, I will use the essential oil extractor. I determined the size of the conical vase by running distillation experiments with water. The amount of liquid collected at the end of the experiment determined the volume of the conical vase. After running the experiment, I determined the conical vase should have a volume of approximately 325 ml.

The Essential oil conical vase and oil collector:

I needed to change the conical vase that I made in Computer-Aided Design week because, it was too big and I needed to add a bridge so the oil could drain. Also I needed to add a support for the collector cup.

Below is the sketch of the new model and the diamentions:

I used the 3D printer with ABS (Acylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) filament. It took 18 hours to print my model.


Support table and legs:

I used plywood of 9mm for both the support table and legs and cut out the designs using the laser cutter. In Computer-controlled cutting week  you can see more about the base and legs.


The final project by itself:


The conical vase will then be connected to the distillation equipment by a hose that will attach at the end of the condenser and at the entrance of the conical vase valve as you can see in the image below:


I decided to add on a system that will measure the temperature of the oil being extracted. I chose to make a Bluetooth temperature sensor and app to read the temperatures of the oils. The average temperature of the essential oil was 95 F right when it was draining into the collector.
I used the input device combined with the temprature sensor, which I made previously. Please take a look at those weeks to see the step by step on how I designed it.

Below are the materials I used for the Bluetooth temperature sensor:

1 x Bluetooth HC-05
1 x Power connector
1 x Audio connector (for the temperature sensor)
1 x 5V voltage regulator
2 x Capacitors
2 x 10 kΩ resistors
1 x 5 kΩ resistors

I made a box to enclose the temperature sensor board.

I designed the box using CorelDraw.

Then I cut it using the laser cutter machine using 3mm MDF, and the final result looks like this:

After I set up all the equipment and had all the materials ready, I started to grate the oranges, I used 13 oranges.


Quantity of material used:
312g orange to 1500ml water.


After I measured the weight of the 13 oranges and the water, I put both in the 2000 ml round bottom flask.


The heating mantle was switched on at an intensity 10, after 30 minutes the mixture boiled at 192.2 F degrees and remained constant during the process.

After boiling for 20 min, the orange peels began to rise because they were initially below the balloon. This happens because the orange zests density is greater than the density of the water. Distillation was completed after 1:30 min.


After I finished extracting the essential oil I put all the oil and water volume in a Becker to measure the oil quantity.The final volume of oil + water was approximately 325 ml. It was observed that only 25 ml of oil was distilled, so the remaining 300 ml were of hydrolate (water + oil mixture).


Here bellow is a picture of the full set up of the distillation equipment, the final project and the system I created.


Above is a close-up picture of the Bluetooth thermometer and app.

Initially I had used the Arduino to measure the temperature and sends it to the bluetooth but, I had to redo the system on a board and solder the components of the temperature sensor (Interface and application programming), as I described in the course of this page.

After soldering the board, I made a box to put that system inside.
In the previous photos I still had not developed the system described above.

Below are photos of the new system.

You can see the picture of the Bluetooth thermometer inside a box and the app.
At this time I didn’t use the computer because I soldered in my board a power conector which I plugged directly into the wall outlet.



Fab license:

I chose Fab license for my copyright.

"This work may be reproduced, modified, distributed, performed, and displayed for any purpose, but must acknowledge "project name". Copyright is retained and must be preserved. The work is provided as is; no warranty is provided, and users accept all liability."

"Essential oil extractor’s a project designed By Laura Cristina Massaglia during the Fab Academy 2017, at Fab Lab Facens, Sorocaba-SP Brazil. It is an essential oil extractor which allows the oil to separate by itself. This project can be modified and scaled to any size to fulfill the needs of any project using this design and system. Since the Essential Oil extractor is completely available on the Fab Academy website the need for intellectual property or copyright is not at the moment existent. Therefore, the project will be covered with a Fab Lab license, under the name of Oil Extractor. 




Here you can watch the final project video: https://youtu.be/RdERZFDrXqY

Project Files:

    •  Conical
    •  Collection cup
    •  Base
    •  Legs
    •  Thermometer.brd
    •  Thermometer.sch
    •  Thermometer.ino
    •  Bluetooth.brd
    •  Bluetooth.sch
    •  Bluetooth.ino
    •  App
    •  Link app
    •  Conical (Solidworks)
    •  Collection cup (Solidworks)
    •  Base (Solidworks)
    •  Legs (Solidworks)