NEMO-Chemistry - 9-6-2016 at 04:50
Local (ish) to me is a pine forest owned by the forestry commission.
Recently they have started to fell an area of it, part of the process leaves behind the bark and the branches from the trees.
I have spoke with the person who drives the machine that cuts and process the logs, apparently as long as I am not in an area where they are actually
felling, I can collect and use some of the waste material (bark and pine needles).
having read up on turpentine it seems i could steam distill some turpentine from the bark and some pine oil from the needles.
My question is on distillation of the raw turpentine after steam distillation.
Is it worth distilling the turpentine into several fractions for using for other plant extractions, or would you just use the complete product
obtained from the steam distillation?
The other point is, apparently a sticky residue gets left behind. What would be the best way to clean this up afterwards? i would prefer not to trash
my glassware 
.
The pine oil i can also extract via steam distillation, however to purify i would then need to distill? Wiki informs me it is liquid at 5C but dosnt
boil until 195C!! So would i use an air cooled condenser?
I ask after reading that water is not the best cooling agent when dealing with temperatures over 150C.
Or would this kind of distillation be better with reduced pressure distillation and would i need a alot of vacuum? I have an old pump but the vacuum
it pulls is not immense and probably more comparable with a water vacuum apparatus!
Thank you in advance for any advice
Daffodile - 9-6-2016 at 08:36
Ive done distillation from various tree bits before, generally I get either a smokey smelling flammable liquid, or a strong smelling pine resiny oil
that dissolves and precipitates from alcohol in yellow globs. Never have I had a turpentine product before. Good luck though, just remember the most
of the process is about temperature.
NEMO-Chemistry - 9-6-2016 at 09:21
According to wikipedia only certain pines contain it, i have no idea if the ones near me are one of species. I am going to try steam distillation
first, using just the bark. I am also going to try steam distillation of the pine needles for pine oil, apparently used for the lubrication of the
mechanisms of fine clocks! No idea if its going to be any good on my digital watch though .
i do have some papers floating arounf my HDD somewhere on the process, i will post them when i find them.