STUDY OF COMPOSITION VARIATION OF DIFFERENT DISTILLATE FRACTIONS OF CITRUS AURANTIUM L. OBTAINED BY STEAM DISTILLATION

Sour orange Citrus aurantium L. is a well known tree as a Citrus rootstock, as well as for its flowers. These flowers are full of essential oil which are stored in essence glands. When they withdraw water-distillation they produce an essential oil Neroli as well as orange blossom water distillate. The present work focused on studying orange blossom water composition variation during extraction by steam distillation. A liquid-liquid extraction by hexane was applied on various orange blossom water fractions, and then a GC allowed analysing them. The qualitative study revealed that major components for all fractions are linalol and α-terpineol. Those two elements represent 80% of the total composition of the first fractions. In contrast, for the last ones, there is an important decrease in amounts of these components for linalyl acetate and terpinolene.