[pleika]

Dear all
My name is Quang Vinh, I am from Vietnam. I am looking for ways to preserve flower, as I see this post from a member, post in 2016. I am having the same problem with her, but Icould not contact her, so I re-post her post. Hope someone can help me to solve this problem!
Thanks all!

Hello, my name is Karina and I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. Im a college student, currently studying chemistry.

Im hoping someone can help me out, cause im going desperate.
So I've always love flowers. so i was browsing around youtube and i stumble upon this video about a technology to preserve flowers using chemicals like ethanol and gylcol.

here are the links, please check them out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3u-4B7d0qo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKP4LR8rBaQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0N7C0LXNEo

so i search the internet for journals and articles about this method, and they confirm this methods. maybe differ in what kind of glycol they use.

so the point of this method, is to substitute the flower moisture with a substance that's less volatile.
the steps are:

1. dehydration, both the video and journals that i found uses ethanol. so i used ethanol too. the video shows a change in physical appearance like color bleaching, and bubble. they did this by soaking in ethanol (primary solvent)

so now, the flower is filled with ethanol.

2. substituting the ethanol with a less volatile substance (secondary solvent). the video said they used glycerin or glycol. in the journal i read, polypropylene glycol (PPG) gave out the best result. they did this my soaking in the substance

3. drying. both the video and journal did this by just air-drying it.

i think i did step 1 right (dehydration) because i got the same results as the video.

now the problem is the substitute, i tried several substance, i tried glycerin, propylene glycol (PG, not polypropylene glycol), i tried a solution of half ethanol and half gylcerin (because glycerin alone has a very high viscousity), and i also tried a solution of 30% ethanol and 70% propylene glycol.

i failed because after they dried, they all shrink and dont have the fresh flower structure as i hope it would. and the drying process was very loong.

in the video, they mentioned something about ethanol as a catalyst? id like to know what everyone thinks, and what kind of other substance or mixture i should try. and id like to ask, theoretically, can glycerine or glycol, substitute the ethanol in the flower? the journal said it can, cause glycerine and glycol has a higher affinity.

[pleika]

Does anyone still read this?

[Mitch]

How long did you let step 1 go for?

[pleika]

What I did sofar:
24h
48h
72h
With absolute Ethanol!