Fractionation of Turpentine

Abstract

Turpentine (pine oil) is a liquid phase of the Pinus mercusii gum that consists of α-pinene, δ-pinene, δ-carene, limonene, and others. These components, if separated, have a higher added value compared to selling crude pine oil. Separation process by distillation is the common method to fractionate all of the components. However, distillation at atmospheric pressure has a potential to decompose some turpentine components. This study aims to obtain the optimum operating conditions that produce compounds of turpentine. The experimental method used consisted of three stages. The first stage is the analysis of components from the main raw material, turpentine. The second step is the turpentine fractionation with the process of party vacuum distillation. The third step is the analysis of the distillate results using Gas Chromatography with FID. The experiment was carried out by varying the operating pressure of the vacuum distillation process which is at 0.2 atm; 0.45 atm and 1 atm. The experimental results show that thermal degradation did not occur at pressures of 0.45 atm and 0.2 atm. The experimental results are in accordance with the simulation results with a column efficiency of 45%. Better results can be obtained by adding stages to 25 stages from 10 stages used and can achieve composition results up to analyst grade (> 99.9%). Distillation of 0.2 atm pressure is the best operating condition judging from the profit generated and its energy consumption.