What is Agarwood oil?
Agarwood oil is an aromatic liquid extracted from the agarwood tree. These trees are available in some parts of Asia, and they are used in the production of perfumes and medicines, while some use it in religious’ cultural customs.
How to apply agarwood oil?
You can apply agarwood oil directly to the skin as it is non-irritating, a good quality drops can last for days on the skin.
Some are using the agarwood oil for air humidifier; add some drops into a diffuser to have a relaxing aroma in the room.
How do I know if my agarwood oil is real?
There are several methods to differentiate the pure agarwood oil from fake one, below are some recommended methods
1) Using the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, one of the best and accurate method to analyze the natural samples by chromatography and mass spectrometer, with some parameters we can tell if this Agarwood oil is real or fake.
2) By physical appearance and aroma, the good quality of agarwood has a light yellow or brown color.
3) By smell, a trained person can easily differentiate between the fake and real agarwood, the real agarwood has a distinctive aromatic scent.
How to extract agarwood Oil?
The extraction of agarwood oil goes through several methods. Below are two standard techniques used in this process.
Water distillation method?
The water distillation method is one of the most common forms of extracting fragrant substances. In this method, agarwood is ground and boiled in water to a specific temperature. Temperature is carefully monitored, as a high temperature could destroy the aromatic particles molecules. The steam is collected and condensed; once it cooled, the oil floats on the top of the water, so we use some filters to separate the oil from the distilled water. This process is time-consuming, but it is the cheapest.
Steam distillation method?
The second method of extracting agarwood oil is called steam distillation. It is one of the best practices used to isolate essential oils. In this process, steam is passed over agarwood chips after boiling them to open its pores, and as soon as they open their pores, the aromatic particles are released with steam.
The particles are collected in a cooling system to turn them into a mixture of water and oil. The water is disposed off, and the aromatic oil is preserved.