Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Distillation of animal products?

khourygeo77 - 17-6-2019 at 06:06

Hello,

I have been practicing distillations for some time with success on herbal products.

However, I started experimenting on animal products without success.
I tried distilling volatile compounds of honey and beef with almost no yield at all (100g batches). So I was wondering if there is a certain way to perform such distillations or if these products have so few volatile compounds?

In the case of the latter, does anyone animal products that yield volatile compounds? (could be milk-blood-organs-bones etc)

Thanks for your help

Sulaiman - 17-6-2019 at 06:56

I guess I'd start by researching the kidneys and gall bladder
- as that's where smelly stuff happens :P

DraconicAcid - 17-6-2019 at 07:09

If you distill stuff like fingernails, hooves, and antlers, you get "spirits of hartshorn", which is ammonia.

The alchemists wrote about the distillation of an egg, which gave some kind of oil, IIRC.

The only time the idea of distilling beef has come up in my experience was when I asked my class what industries use distillation- I told them it happens a lot in Alberta (trying to give them the clue about alcohol and petrochemicals). The class settled on beef and dairy.

Pumukli - 17-6-2019 at 07:31

Distilling piss!

No kidding - check the attached literature and see how serious scientist can get when "playing" with body fluids!

Attachment: urinod.pdf (652kB)
This file has been downloaded 396 times

Attachment: urinod2.pdf (849kB)
This file has been downloaded 367 times

Tsjerk - 17-6-2019 at 08:04

You can distill alkyl amines from rotten fish, some more even worse smelling crap comes over with it as a bonus.

khourygeo77 - 17-6-2019 at 12:09

Thanks for all the answers. It seems almost nothing beneficial can be distilled out of these substances despite the medicinal effects of prepared herbs and plants. And the odor is worse unfortunately. Animal products proved medicinal however when extracted.

Any idea if these products can change following a certain natural manipulation? For example, adding water to honey will produce a fermentation and alter its nature. What about other animal products?

Urine doesnt seem very beneficial when prepared. Also bones or hartshorn or fingernails and similar substances (maybe they can be prepared in a certain way that changes their nature, just like honey can turn into mead and become more volatile without or with very little deteriorating in smell or toxicity)

Herr Haber - 18-6-2019 at 03:15

"Animal black" is a pigment obtained by the distillation of bones.
It was used to blacken the letters in street names signs.

Basically put a bunch of bones with their marrow in a jar and you cook it !

Modern paints have replaced it but it is still used by some perfectionists. Animal black doesnt react with stone.

Sulaiman - 18-6-2019 at 04:49

I believe that whenever we do an extraction of any kind;
. it has been done before, with care and precision, and documented
. identifying extracts (e.g.different fractions from a distillation) when I know what I'm expecting is very difficult
. identifying an unknown but common chemical is difficult for me. (e.g.what is this white powder ?)

So, your first research should be reading/viewing,
then try to recreate a documented procedure
(I rarely follow in detail - just something similar)
then do it again and try to get it right this time,

without extreme luck / destiny
it is unlikely that we amateurs will discover something novel and useful :(
but I'm an optimist :P

khourygeo77 - 18-6-2019 at 13:38

I am trying to get all the info I can in reading many texts, however almost everything I am finding is what I dont need

"Totally, more than 300 various volatile organic
compounds (VOC) were identified in honeydew
honeys by GC×GC-TOF-MS, while for 100 of
them, confirmed by injection of standards, a calculated area percentage greater than 0.01% was
found. The list of identified compounds together
with retention times, area percentage as well as
calculated linear retention indices obtained by
both column combinations is presented in Tab. 1."

This means that volatile compounds of honey consisted of around 0.01% or I misunderstood it?

[Edited on 18-6-2019 by khourygeo77]

Ubya - 18-6-2019 at 14:57

just a question, when you say distillation you are referring to steam distillation right?
by the way you reminded me of the film perfume.
yea you can just distill everything, even if there are volatile compounds, most of the time the are in really low concentration, or are somewhat soluble in your solvent, so you can't have a 2 phases distillate.
dry distillation of hair, nailsand hoofs gives you ammonia, dry distillation of wood gives you many things (methanol, water, hydrocarbons, tarpenes, tar, wood gas etc), dry distillation of pine resin can give you turpentine, camphor is distilled from the wood of a tree, you can use steam distillation of spices (oregano, cinnamon, cloves, etc) .
i really don't know what you expected from the distillation of beef, essential oil of beef?

if you can get hold of a dead skunk you can try to distillate its anal glands, it's gonna be smelly.

draculic acid69 - 18-6-2019 at 19:11

Try a acidic distillation of beef fat maybe you'll get some free acids distill over,maybe.or try a destructive distillation using NaOH of beef.i think distilling without acidification or basification won't yeilds much.youd also need to scale up alot to like a kg to get even a little bit of anything.i think distilling honey is a bad idea as burnt sugar is one of the nastiest things I've ever encountered and honey being full of sugar is going to be the same.lots of CO,C,CO2,and other NASTY shit that makes you feel extremely sick and headthrobby, I would not recommend heating sugar rich material to anyone other than in a cooking recipe.ive become extremely sensitive to it and even the slightest hint is enough to make me feel like shit.

khourygeo77 - 18-6-2019 at 21:51

Quote: Originally posted by Ubya  
just a question, when you say distillation you are referring to steam distillation right?
by the way you reminded me of the film perfume.
yea you can just distill everything, even if there are volatile compounds, most of the time the are in really low concentration, or are somewhat soluble in your solvent, so you can't have a 2 phases distillate.
dry distillation of hair, nailsand hoofs gives you ammonia, dry distillation of wood gives you many things (methanol, water, hydrocarbons, tarpenes, tar, wood gas etc), dry distillation of pine resin can give you turpentine, camphor is distilled from the wood of a tree, you can use steam distillation of spices (oregano, cinnamon, cloves, etc) .
i really don't know what you expected from the distillation of beef, essential oil of beef?

if you can get hold of a dead skunk you can try to distillate its anal glands, it's gonna be smelly.


lol, I stopped just after clicking the link.

Dry distillation yields toxic substances and smells of burnt substances so I dont use that.

I mean to distill something medicinal.

I didnt expect to get essential oils, but some volatile compounds and probably some oils sinking or floating as it would be usual to insoluble volatile compounds. I have enough experience with vegetable compounds so I thought it would be a good idea to start with animals as they can prove really beneficial after preparation as well. But it seems that their benefit comes from prepared extract instead of the distilled compounds
Quote:
draculic acid 69 says:

Try a acidic distillation of beef fat maybe you'll get some free acids distill over,maybe.or try a destructive distillation using NaOH of beef.i think distilling without acidification or basification won't yeilds much.youd also need to scale up alot to like a kg to get even a little bit of anything.i think distilling honey is a bad idea as burnt sugar is one of the nastiest things I've ever encountered and honey being full of sugar is going to be the same.lots of CO,C,CO2,and other NASTY shit that makes you feel extremely sick and headthrobby, I would not recommend heating sugar rich material to anyone other than in a cooking recipe.ive become extremely sensitive to it and even the slightest hint is enough to make me feel like shit.


As I said, I dont use dry distillation so I dont burn sugars and wont have a problem of getting nasty shit. I learnt this after getting some results you had.

What you said about adding acid and bases is interesting. How does that work? Why would they distill more compounds?

[Edited on 19-6-2019 by khourygeo77]

Tsjerk - 18-6-2019 at 23:01

Salts (as many compounds exist in mixtures) don't distill readily. Many compounds, for example carboxylic acids, are protonated by for example 1% sulfuric acid and then can be distilled.
Other compounds like amines can be distilled when they are deprotonated (by for example sodium hydroxide).

[Edited on 19-6-2019 by Tsjerk]

draculic acid69 - 19-6-2019 at 00:04

Yes as tsjerk said above and with the basification it's more of a destructive distillation I was alluding to like with NaOH heated with wood making methanol and acetic acid.i don't know what meat products would yeild but I think it would be the way to get a result.

karlos³ - 19-6-2019 at 01:16

Someone mentioned the movie perfume... distill some copulins(from which source? I don't know... dirty underwear maybe? :D) and make a highly priced selling aphrodisiac perfume?
Ok, this reply is only 50% meant serious :P

khourygeo77 - 21-6-2019 at 12:02

Ok,
Thanks guys for the help!
It turns out animal products have so little of these volatile compounds I was talking about.

pneumatician - 16-10-2019 at 10:00

you can see a pic of mine in pretty pictures, I say "plant extract" or something like this but in reality the "plant" or flowers are HONEY :)