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Essential Oil Absolute VS Distilled?
Historically a method known as enfleurage was used to extract an absolute. This meant putting the flowers in Lard, replacing them every so many days. This method was superceded by solvent extraction long ago because of the time and labour, even though twice the amount of oil can be produced. I don't eat animals so lard is not something I use.Present tradition for creating an absolute is to put the flowers or plant matter into hexane, separating the heavy matter from the plant leaving the oil and waxes, evaporating or vacuum extracting out the Hexane making a concrete. The concrete is then put in ethanol, the temperature is dropped to Minus 25C solidifying the waxes for removal , then the ethanol is vacuum extracted from the oil to leave you with the essential oil.
The problem with absolutes created with this process is that hexane is a solvent, which must be fully vacuum extracted from the end product, there is almost always too much ethanol left in the final product and pesticides and phthalates are almost always found. I would only contemplate getting an oil like this if thoroughly tested for all the possible unwanted residuals.This is why I switched to The Organically grown Rose absolute which is created through a gas called (Klea, which is also used in asthma inhalers).