Question

Write all the possible things that might have been the reason of failure extracting limonene from orange peel oil and from this limonene synthetizing carvone. Propose improvements.

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Answer 1

Limonene is a very low weight water immiscible compound which can be separated by steam distillation. In doing so, we may face numerous difficulties. Firstly, limonene distributed unevenly in the two parts of the orange peel i.e. skin and pith, so only some part from both the layers can be extracted. We can obtain limonene in good quantity by using only its outer skin. Secondly, sometimes the moisture present in the glassware also affects the yield, for that we can dry them using vaccum pump to get rid of the moisture. Also, there are some temperature issues are also there which badly affects the quality of extracted products.