The study of ethanol presence in commercial herbaceous distillates by gas chromatography method

Ethanol is an oxygenated organic compound used as a solvent in the industry ]1[. Most of digested ethanol is metabolized in the liver and some of it excretes through the respiration, sweating and urine ]2[. Plants re-emit a substantial fraction of their assimilated carbon into the atmosphere as biogenic volatile organic compounds ]3[. With respect to the relatively high amount of the methanol in the herbal distillates, it is possible to find ethanol in such drinks too, because, ethanol is produced by plants and emitted to the atmosphere ]4[. In this study, the ethanol content of 30 industrial herbal distillates made by three different factories was measured by GC. Then, the results were evaluated by the statistical methods and SPSS software. The obtained results indicated that some of the herbal distillates contain ethanol which the maximum and minimum amount of ethanol existed in Rosewater (with mean 96.4 mg/l) and Salix aegyptica distillate (15.5 mg/l) respectively, while most of them have no ethanol. The presence of ethanol in some of examined samples (not all of them) is caused most studies have been necessary to attain correct results.

“Ethanol”, “Gas chromatography”, “Herbaceous distillates”