It starts by chopping in small pieces the orange peel, lemon peel and lime rind respectively so that the steam can vaporize easily the essential oil in the peel or in the citrus rind.
The steam, produced in small vertical boiler is passed through steam pipes into an evaporation kettle which contains the chopped material and water. The raw materials to be processed for each type of production are located on a grid placed at certain position above the level of the water which fills the bottom of the vessel. The water is vaporized indirectly by the steam flowing through a coiled pipe covered by the water. The water plus the extracted oil coming from the evaporator is recovered in a separate water cooled condenser.
The mixture flowing out of the condenser is separated in a Florentine flask. The essential oil is collected at the top and distilled water leaves the flask at the bottom. As the water still contains some residue oil, it is sent back to the evaporator to recover the some remained oil by second distillation.
The production process is environmental friendly. The residual product of the distillation process is used for animal feed or compost production.
