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smilesalot891 smilesalot891
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10 years ago
I am interested in making my own type of scent cover for deer hunting. Scent killer is $6.99 for a 8 oz bottle where I can get it from, and it doesn't last long enough. I am also a chemistry major, so I have taken various organic courses and understand the main ideas of different reactions.

I would like to extract the oils from various leaves, nuts, and plants (oak, maple, walnut, poplar, acorns, hickory, walnuts, grasses?) to hopefully combine for something that smells very similar to the scent killer products that I use.

Usually when we do an ester synthesis or something similar in lab, we start with a compound with an aromatic, dissolve it in solvent, and then evaporate the solvent leaving behind that (water soluable) oil which can be diluted with water. In this case, I would mix the plant scented oil with water to have large quantities of scent killer available for my own use. (I use a LOT because nothing ruins a hunt like getting smelled by deer).

Anyways, I need help on which solvents to use to extract the oils of the plants with. Also, would the process only be to soak the leaves/plants/nuts in the solvent, or would stirring and heat (such as a reflux reaction) also be necessary? Thanks!!!
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wrote...
10 years ago
To be honest, I doubt you need much more than simple alcohol.  If you were really keen you could use a strong organic solvent like xylene, but I have safety concerns about this since you are unlikely to be able to remove all of this.

As for mixing, I'd avoid a lot of heat since you don't want to chemically change the oil, just extract it.  I'd suggest lysing the mixture of organic material in a blender before adding it to the solvent.  Very mild heating and agitation over time should extract the oil.  You can then vacuum evaporate off the solvent.  Again, I'd recommend vacuum evaporation over heat evaporation as this should cause less degradation of your extracted oils.

A lot of this is speculation since I haven't done this myself, but the process is relatively simple.

Good luck and good hunting.
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