Investigation on chemical composition and optimization of essential oil obtainment from waste Pinus taeda L. using hydrodistillation

ABSTRACT: The extraction of essential oils obtained by the hydrodistillation of needles/twigs waste of Pinus taeda L. was optimized by applying response surface methodology (RSM), with 24 full factorial design, in order to improve oil essential production, and aggregate value to the production chain of pine wood. Through the model it was possible to ascertain the influence of the variables in the average amount of essential oil (0.1032 mL), being the variables analyzed: biomass - Bm (x1), extraction time - ET (x2), Bm:ET (x1x2) and sample size - SS: drying times - DT (x3x4). Only linear terms (biomass and extraction time) and your interaction demonstrated significant positive values (0.0344, 0.0206 and 0.0131). The major components of the essential oil identified by GC-MS were: β-phellandrene: (30.39 and 22.44%), tricyclene (26.14 and 20.46%), β-myrcene (14.32 and 11.50%), β-pinene (22.49 and 1.43%) and α-pinene (0.25 and 11.26%) in the years 2011 and 2012, respectively. Our results show that the essential oil obtained from P. taeda represents a way of using some of the waste generated by the timber industry. The process of obtaining doesn't require treatments such as controlled drying or size reduction of the sample, indicating that it can be used in an industrial scale.