Sunlight, air, soil and water * * * together gave birth to life on this planet, and also produced rich material resources, thus making this planet full of vitality. Plants convert solar energy into chemical energy through photosynthesis and store it in the formed organic compounds. These chemical energies are not only utilized by plants themselves and all heterotrophs, but also the energy source for human nutrition and activities. So plants are huge "energy conversion stations". Not only that, some plants can further make nutrients into volatile aromatic molecules, which are stored in gland sacs in different parts of plants and will be released under high temperature or extrusion. This is plant essential oil.

Speaking of which, can you understand why plants have different smells? The official definition of plant essential oil is: artificially extracted plant essence. Sperm is a variety of aromatic molecules converted by various enzymes after photosynthesis in plant secretory cells.

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Then the question is, why do plants make essential oils? Through scientific research, it is found that after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, plants have developed substances similar to human blood, of course, not for human use, but for their own better survival on the earth, but these essential oils can bring similar effects to humans when they help plants produce certain physiological functions.

Essential oil molecules are small, which can penetrate plant tissues, accelerate the transport of oxygen and nutrients, and accelerate the metabolism of plants; Essential oil is also a kind of communication substance, which can keenly detect the situation of too much or too little hormone in plants and adjust it to maintain a balanced state; The essential oils of different plants contain different components. Some essential oils can prevent the reproduction of harmful bacteria, but will not kill beneficial bacteria. Moreover, plants will change the proportion of essential oil every year according to the changes of environment and climate, so that bacteria cannot produce drug resistance. Rich in volatile essential oil, it can quickly ignite a fire and turn it into a big fire. According to the characteristics of fire burning upwards, plants, roots and seeds near the ground can survive and regenerate after the fire is extinguished. Therefore, many forest fires can restore vegetation naturally for a period of time, and the roots and seeds of plants can survive by the protection of essential oils; Plants also have the function of self-healing. When plants are injured, essential oil will flow to the wound site, so that the wound can quickly solidify and prevent infection. Another main function of essential oil is to attract pollinators such as birds and insects. The pheromone effect makes animals like to get close to each other, thus spreading pollen to further places. The smell of aromatic molecules contained in some essential oils can also drive away the eating of mosquitoes and other animals.

As mentioned earlier, essential oil is a plant essence extracted artificially, so how do people extract it? Well-known essential oils are usually extracted from leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, roots, bark, resin, wood and so on. Distillation, cold pressing, liposuction, solvent extraction, supercritical carbon dioxide extraction and ultrasonic extraction ... Among them, distillation is the most commonly used extraction method of essential oil. Essential oils are hidden in oil sacs or oil pipes of plants, and it will definitely take some time to extract these aromatic molecules.

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The purity, effective components and aroma of the extracted essential oil will vary with different extraction methods, which will also cause great differences in the price of the back-end essential oil.