THE CHEMISTRY OF FRAGRANCE

Aroma chemicals, also known aroma, odorant, fragrance, flavor, are

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volatile compounds sensed in the olfactory tissue in nasal
cavity by the odor receptor sites.
Aroma chemicals can be found in products such as: food, wine,
spices, perfumes, fragrance oils, and essential oils.
Flavors affect both the sense of taste and smell, whereas fragrances affect only smell.
Flavors tend to be naturally occurring, and fragrances tend to be synthetic.
RAW MATERIALS:
Flowers, herbs, grasses, spices, fruits, wood, roots, resins, silk and
leaves, gums and secretions, such as animal, as well as resources
such as alcohol, petrochemicals, coal, and coal tars.
MANUFACTURING PROCESSES:
Maceration
Similar to enflourage but the plant material is soaked in vegetable
oil or any fat, heated and strained at which point it can be used
for massage. This is repeated many times until the fat becomes
saturated with essential oil and is then bathed in alcohol, which
evaporates leaving essential oil.
REACTION MECHANISM:
Small esters, in combination with other volatile compounds, produce the
pleasant aroma of fruits. In general, a symphony of chemicals is responsible
for specific fruit/plant fragrances; however, very often one single compound
plays a leading role. Esters are made by a condensation reaction between
carboxylic acid and alcohol in which a molecule of water is eliminated.

Fragrance extraction - the extraction of aromatic compounds from raw

materials, using methods such as distillation, solvent Fischer Esterification
extraction, expression, enfleurage, and maceration.

Products : essential oils (any class of volatile oils that smells like the
plant it comes from), absolutes (more concentrated than essential
oils), concretes (concentrated extract that contains the waxes and/or fats
as well as the odoriferous material from the plant), or butters, depending
on the amount of waxes in the extracted product.

Steam Distillation
Common method for extracting aromatic compounds from lavender,
rosemary, eucalyptus, and other fresh flowers, stems, leaves, roots,
barks, and seeds.
Steps
1. Place the fresh botanical material into the still and heat by forcing steam
through it for over an hour, so the aromatic plant material will reach
temperatures over 212 degrees and some of the aromatic compounds
are denatured or altered by the exposure to high heat.
2. The steam which then contains the essential oil, is passed through a
cooling system to condense the steam, which forms a liquid from which
the essential oil and floral water is then separated.

Solvent Extraction
When a specific plant is very sensitive to heat and cannot be distilled
(such as jasmine or tuberose), the scent is extracted by a chemical
solvent such as petroleum ether, methanol, ethanol, or hexane.
Steps
1. Put the selected plant material inside the still (rotating tank or drum).
2. Pour the solvent over the plant material. The plant matter dissolves in
the solvent and leave a waxy material (concrete) that contains the oil.
(A vacuum is used to remove the chemical solvents, which are recycled for re-use.)
3. Put the concrete in ethyl alcohol. The oil dissolves in the alcohol and
rises.
4. Heat the mixture to vaporize the alcohol, which once fully burned off,
leaves a higher concentration of the perfume oil on the bottom.
Expression
Expression, also referred to as cold pressing can only be done
when the plant material has a naturally high content of oil such as
tangerine, lemon, bergamot, sweet orange, and lime. It uses
machines to squeeze the oil out of plants. Basically, there are 3
major ways to fragrance expression namely: sponge pressing, cuelle
piquer, and machine abrasion.
Enfleurage
Enfleurage extraction is fairly expensive and somewhat uncommon; for
delicate flowers or petals.
1. Spread layer of fat (animal fat or solid plant oil, such as coconut oil)
on a plate of glass.
2. Delicate petals or flowers are placed on top of the layer of fat; they are
placed as close together as possible, without touching one another. Then,
another plate of glass is placed on top of the flower material and the
process is repeated. The glass-fat-flower sandwich may have up to ten
layers and must set at room temperature for three days.
3. At the end of three days, the sandwich is carefully dismantled and the
used flowers are removed. Fresh flower are then placed where the
previous flowers had been and the sandwich is re-assembled. In this
manner, the fats are impregnated with the concentrated scent of the
flowers.
4. Finally, after about a month and up to twelve changes of flower layers,
the fat is scraped from the glass plates to yield waxy enfleurage pomade.
General manufacturing steps of fragrance from plant materials
The History of Fragrance
o The origins of the holistic method of healing known today as aromatherapy dates back to 18,000
BC.
o Traces of perfume factories at least 4000 years old have been recently found during excavations.
o Cave paintings in Lascaux, France depict the burning of aromatic plants, thought to be used to
drive out evil spirits.
o Essential oils have been used in Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine) for several hundred years.
They were used in ancient Greece and Rome and there has been documentation as far back
as 2800 BC, during the reign of Khufu in ancient Egypt, of oils, wines and incenses being infused
with plant essences.
o The Classical world of Greece and Rome built knowledge of spices, herbs, oils, and developed
the process of distillation.
o The earliest recognizable chemists were women, the perfume-makers of Babylon, who used the
earliest known stills to produce their wares. The first individual chemist known to history was
Tapputi, the perfume-maker, who was mentioned on a cuneiform tablet from the second
millennium BCE in Mesopotamia ~ Paul Strathern, Mendeleevs Dream
Facts
You actually smell with your brain: Not your nose, as you might assume
Your scent cells are renewed every 28 days, so every four weeks you get a new nose, but your
sense of smell diminishes with ageing.
Good smells make you happier.
Blind people do not have enhanced powers of smell.
Cleopatra used gallons of perfumed oil to seduce Julius Ceasar.
Ambergris is one of the most valuable raw materials in perfumery. The ingredient has a smell
thats described as aquatic and sweet. It also happens to be produced in the intestines of sperm
whales. Nowadays the use of natural ambergris is forbidden and replaced by synthetic versions
of this rare ingredient.
The creation of a single perfume can take months or even years.
Forget fingerprints or CCTV, perspiration could be the big thing for crime busting in the future.
Israeli chemists say the food we eat, drugs we take, gender and even state of mind, all combine
to make each persons sweat unique.
Your sense of smell accounts for 75-95% of the impact a flavour has. Without being able to
smell the difference between onion and potato, itd be difficult to tell them apart.