How many ways are there to extract oils?
In addition to traditional methods, there are several new techniques for distilling essential oils. Traditional methods include: scarification (pressing the outer rinds of citrus fruits), steam distillation, oleoresin (from the resins of trees like frankincense and myrrh) and enfleurage (soaking flowers in animal fat). New techniques include: turbo-distillation (water steam process with agitation), hydro-diffusion (similar to a percolator), solvent extraction (using mineral solvents instead of animal fat), continuous distillation (plants are continuously fed into a tube and infused with steam), steam stripping (dry heat that reduces the distillation of cedarwood from 24 hours to 25 seconds) and hyper critical carbon dioxide (taking carbon dioxide to 250 times normal atmospheric pressure).
