[Gorm]

Dear board,

In evaluating an organic chemistry business case of the production of essential oil of copaifera off. (copaiba), based here in Santarem, Para, Brazil (rural Amazonas rainforest). I need an intelligent opinion on the following question:

I have 50 samples of essential oil of copaiba produced by simple distillation of the copaiba resin/sap. I have no access to a gas cromatograph or any industrial laboratory. What is the easiest and lowest cost way to measure if the caryophyllene content is above 60% ?

If I cannot have certainty in the measurement results it would be fine to have a good indication.

--- We believe the best way to preserve and strengthen the Amazon rainforest is to let the local population earn a decent living by selling natural Amazon products that do no harm or interference in the ecology. The resin of Copaiba is such a product. Your assistance in this case may actually do a small difference here in the Amazon! ---


Thank you in advance,

Gorm

[movies]

I think you will have a hard time telling the caryophyllene content without using a GC, HPLC, or NMR.  You could perhaps do a simple analysis with thin layer chromatography (TLC), though.  It wouldn't be a quantitative measure, but you can often tell roughly whether one sample contains more of a particular compound than another if both samples are approximately the same concentration.  If you have some pure caryophyllene, then you just need to make up a standard solution of it and you can do TLC analysis whenever you want to identify caryophyllene.  This is fast, cheap, and reasonably reliable.  If you really want to get a handle on the % composition then you will have to use more sophisticated methods.  I'm sure that you could find a collaborator who would be happy to analyze your samples by GC to give you relative quantities.  It's really a simple experiment to carry out if you have the equipment.

[Gorm]

Movies,

Would it be possible to do a quick measurement on the level of terpenes/non-terpenes in a liquid without the use of GC or TLC?

Thanks in advance,

Gorm

[movies]

Well, NMR, but that's probably not very helpful.  Mass spectrometry could give you a rough idea of what types of things might be present, but it's definitely not quantitative.

Terpenes are kind of difficult to identify because they often don't have many functional groups for preparing derivatives.  Sorry, I wish I had more to offer, but I can't think of anything.