Essential Oil Steam Distillation: Manufacturing 4.0

Abstract

Smart sensors, self-configuration, operational flexibility, and automatic learning, among others, are technological attributes from industry 4.0 appliable to the essential oil extraction by the steam distillation process. These operations are recognized by their simplicity. Nevertheless, lack of automatic controls, process monitoring, and self-adjustment lead to uncontrolled extraction, poor yields, low quality of products. It occurs because of overexposure to high temperatures and overspending resources like energy and water. As far as capacity utilization is concerned, the optimized process is key to planning and managing the production activities.