Making your own D-Limonene & vinegar cleaner

[twofourtwo]

Hi all,

I've been using vinegar for cleaning my house evr since I started using the stuff for extraction purposes (as per The hippie salad oil TEK) and I've been looking for orange oil, not only for extraction purposes but for cleaning brushes etc, too.

I found some in an artists' supply store but I found it quite expensive.

Today I came across this article. It describes a very simple and affordable way to make a cleaner by just sitting orange-peels in vinegar for some fourteen days. The D-limonene migrates into the vinegar which then makes for an excellent and non-toxic, non-polluting cleaner.

How To Make Homemade Citrus Cleaner

I have been eating my way through crates of winter citrus, and recently decided to use some of the peels to make a homemade cleaner. I added orange peels to vinegar, and let them sit in an airtight container for a couple of weeks. The result: a powerful, inexpensive, natural cleaner.

www.apartmenttherapy.com

Of course the main question is; will this stuff be helpful as a solvent in extractions?
This method would surely beat making/ acquiring a distillation setup of some sort...

 

[Parshvik Chintan]

it doesn't sound like you would be able to do saltings with this.

i am not sure it would work..

 

[twofourtwo]

it doesn't sound like you would be able to do saltings with this.

i am not sure it would work..

If I would like to separate the limonene from the vinegar I guess I'd have to distill after all? Which I was trying to avoid, for now at least, as I don't have the tools.


Good thing is, it still works like a dream for cleaning though..

 

[Infundibulum]

Sure vinegar can extract a tiny amount of limonene from orange, just as vinegar can dissolve some lipids and other non-polar compounds (hence its use as an all-round cleaning agent for millennia), but generally vinegar and limonene do not mix.

The blog entry in the OP just makes a vinegar cleaner with a slight orange scent. The procedure described DOES not really extract limonene in the vinegar and in the resulting cleaning agent it is doubtful whether limonene would contribute to better cleaning as opposed to vinegar alone. In fact one would need to compare the latter two before going on and posting something like that.

 

[tetsuotheironman]

I actually stumbled across this as well...

I usually make my own vinegar cleaner anyway and thought it'd be a cool thing to try with orange peels.
I figured even it doesn't really extract limonene it would at least smell kinda nice...

Just cleaned out the first attempt at this today and indeed the vinegar takes on an orange color and is rather fragrant - but I can't say it cleans any better or worse than just vinegar and water (which works pretty well by itself).

The post on supercritical CO2 limonene extraction that was dug up recently sounds like a cool way to actually extract small amounts of limonene.

 

[twofourtwo]

The blog entry in the OP just makes a vinegar cleaner with a slight orange scent. The procedure described DOES not really extract limonene in the vinegar and in the resulting cleaning agent it is doubtful whether limonene would contribute to better cleaning as opposed to vinegar alone. In fact one would need to compare the latter two before going on and posting something like that.

I was *hoping* for something (an easy way to extract limonene) where I should have been *doing my research*... obviously this does not work the way I thought it would, if my basic premises are wrong (' limonene is extracted' ) ... please regard this post as a beginner's mistake & in the future I'll try to keep up higher standards when posting.

It's just that since I found this site I've become very enthusiastic for little experiments like these.

supercritical CO2 limonene extraction

That díd sound cool, but also a tad too technical I'm afraid...

 

[InMotion]

The idea of super critical CO2 extractions is all too often under-played. Dealing with super critical fluids with "home engineering" is not the safest thing, scaling it up to get a usable amount of limonene well... Good luck. On a small scale sure once could obtain say half a gram. Do that a two thousand times and you might as well be steam distilling with a similar carbon foot-print.

People seem to hold onto this connotation that buying something is not sustainable. It's an inherently flawed perspective. Its more sustainable to obtain d-limonene from the producers. Here's why... They obtain the orange peels as waste from the juice industry which would otherwise rot or become compost(I know we all love compost but hang on). Likely on sight the industry then on a large scale extracts probably by steam distillation and if by supercritical(I doubt it) using CO2 that was captured from emissions(recycling it). They do this on an incredibly large scale and use the most efficient procedures they can(why pay an electric bill of $3,000 a month when you can pay one of $1,000 using a better method?). The waste likely goes to a dump but that's still composting as far as I'm concerned. Then they bottle it and distribute it to your door. So rather then eating 10,000 oranges and keeping the peels then trying to do it yourself on a small inefficient scale, someone else can do it for you for the cost of maybe 10 dollars. If you get paid minimum wage I'd venture to say that it is also economically more viable to buy instead of create.

Some really smart people have spent a lot of time making working systems for this type of stuff.

Sorry for the gripe, but I see this train of thought often and wanted to give my speil.

 

[Infundibulum]

The idea of super critical CO2 extractions is all too often under-played. Dealing with super critical fluids with "home engineering" is not the safest thing, scaling it up to get a usable amount of limonene well... Good luck. On a small scale sure once could obtain say half a gram. Do that a two thousand times and you might as well be steam distilling with a similar carbon foot-print.

People seem to hold onto this connotation that buying something is not sustainable. It's an inherently flawed perspective. Its more sustainable to obtain d-limonene from the producers. Here's why... They obtain the orange peels as waste from the juice industry which would otherwise rot or become compost(I know we all love compost but hang on). The industry then on a large scale extracts probably by steam distillation and if by supercritical(I doubt it) using CO2 that was captured from emissions(recycling it). They do this on an incredibly large scale and use the most efficient procedures they can(why pay an electric bill of $3,000 a month when you can pay one of $1,000 using a better method?). The waste likely goes to a dump but that's still composting as far as I'm concerned. Then they bottle it and distribute it to your door. So rather then eating 10,000 oranges and keeping the peels then trying to do it yourself on a small inefficient scale, someone else can do it for you for the cost of maybe 10 dollars. If you get paid minimum wage I'd venture to say that it is also economically more viable to buy instead of create.

Sorry for the gripe, but I see this train of thought often and wanted to give my speil.

Amen, my man. Excellent post. Pretty much if you want limonene the easiest, affordable and safer way is to just go and buy it! No shame in that.