Fragrance and flavor chemistry can be dated back to pre-Christian times. In the beginning of the 19^th century, the production of essential oils was industrialized due to the high demand of these fragrances¹. Terpenes, the main components of the oils, began to be isolated soon there after. Today, the popularity of aromatherapy products has revitalized the ancient practices of fragrance chemistry.

Identification and isolation of terpenes has been facilitated by the introduction of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This tandem process allows the database libraries in the machine to classify the components of each essential oil. The Mass Spectral library of the National Institute of Standards and Technology will be used to facilitate in the identification of the unknown compounds. With this program, it is possible to import a mass spectrum from the GC-MS and use the library to give a high percentile match of each separate spectrum of most of the components in the oil. This type of analysis can help determine what people are really sniffing when using these snake oils.

The purpose of this specific experiment is to identify as many of the major and minor components as possible in four separate aromatherapy products. The products were purchased from the Crabtree and Evelyn Company. Each is a combination of three or four different oils, which in turn have terpenes and other constituents. The products and their essential oils which will be examined are Restoration (grapefruit, orange, cedar), Romance (rose, ylang ylang, patchouli, cardamom), Concentration (silver fir, lime, ginger), and Relaxation (lavender, tangerine, clary sage). Since many of these oils share the same terpenes as major components, careful examination of spectra of the minor components will be necessary to make an accurate identification.

Return to the Student Projects Page

Last updated by John J. Rupp on