Production of Essential Oil from Red Onion for pharmaceutical, chemical and food Utilization

Abstract

Different types of diseases are increasingly affecting people that live in today’s highly pressurized society and these diseases are less responsive to treatment with conventional medicines. Onion is known to be highly medicinal, which is the reason why it is used as the best vegetable in preparation/garnishing of dishes and treatment of ailments. This research covers the extraction of essential oil from onion 3 varieties of (allium cepa) the characterization   of the essential oil, and preservative measures for economic utilization. Steam distillation process was used to extract the oil. Three onion species were collected and used for the research work. The following analysis were carried out on the essential oil produced viz. (i) Physical properties: which comprise of the Refractive index, Density and viscosity of the three onion species (ii) Chemical properties: Which comprise of the iodine value, peroxide value, saponification value and free fatty acid of the three onion  species. The results were compared to the commercial edible oil. It was found that commercial oil is synthetic oil and its composition is completely different from the natural essential oil from onion. Synthetic oil cannot therefore be used therapeutically or  as a substitute for natural essential oil. The research have also dictated a substance call quercetin  for Red onion 22.01%  in the essential oil which are  powerful flavonoid (antioxidant). Other important substances which  seen very vital in the human body are monoteroenes 3.01%, sesquiterpenes 17.21%, and quercetin 22.01%.

Keywords: Production, essential oil, red onion, utilization, pharmaceutical, chemical, food