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ABSOLUTES are produced by a process of solvent extraction from the plant rather than by distillation (the solvent can be any petroleum by-product, such as acetone).
Solvent extraction provides a means of
obtaining a higher volatile yield from the plant or, in some cases, a product that cannot be obtained by other extraction processes, e.g. Jasmin or Carnation (with the potential current exception of hypercritical
CO2 extraction which remains, in many cases, a very expensive process).
In this process, the plants are immersed in the solvent and the ‘separation’ is performed chemically, employing distillation under
special temperatures which condense the oil but not the solvents. Alternatively, the absolute is obtained from the CONCRETE (which is itself derived from soaking the plant material in hexane). The concrete
mixture is then concentrated (double-distilled) and further diluted in alcohol or double-filtered to arrive at the absolute, in which the majority of plant waxes and solvent residues are eliminated. It should be
noted that, even with the most advanced techniques, absolutes extracted in this manner do contain traces of solvent.
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