Abstract: A molecular distillation method was developed to enrich characteristic aroma compounds including octanal, linalool, decanal and valencene in sweet orange oil, while gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used for detection. The optimum parameters of molecular distillation were: temperature of 30 ℃; pressure of 150 Pa; rotation speed of 200 r/min and flow rate of 8 mL/min. Under such an optimum condition, the enrichment results were: octanal (0.46%→ 1.55%), linalool (0.71%→5.84%), decanal (0.59%→9.11%) and valencene (0.24%→7.96%). Finding here reveals that molecular distillation technique is promising in the fast and effective enrichment of the characteristic aroma compounds in citrus oil.

Key words: molecular distillation, enrichment, sweet orange oil, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)