Lemongrass collection technology for the first time in Vietnam by 65-year-old scientist

The 65-year-old scientist and his colleagues developed essential oil distillation equipment with pressure-breaking technology to reduce cell consumption in the process by more than 80%.

Intensive cultivation of citronella on the land affected by climate change to collect essential oils for consumption, export and microbial organic fertilizer production of Dr. Le Van Tri (65 years old, Hanoi) with colleagues, just won the first prize of Vietnam Science and Technology Innovation Award 2016 (Vifotec).

According to the Organizing Committee, this is the first time Vietnam has a comprehensive research project on machinery, technology, production applications to create a closed model related to citronella.

Dr. Le Van Tri shared, during the field trip, seeing people use only the lemongrass of the lemongrass for food processing, while the leaves are thrown away or dried and burned, he thought: " Why are they so wasted, is there any way to take advantage of the leaves of citronella as organic fertilizer? "

Dr. Le Van Tri (rightmost) received the first prize of Vifote on May 16.

At the end of 2012, Dr. Tri and his colleagues began to implement the above idea. He found out, regardless of day and night, that he found that in citronella leaves, the content of essential oils was not great but very useful."Is it because the amount of oil is so low that people do not see the effect so they leave" , although he thought that, he still managed to get that oil.

Vietnam and the world at this time, only technology to collect essential oils by steam rolling method, ie to put leaves in the pot, heat up, evaporate water, the essential oils will follow, then chill to bring essential oils and water into the jar, the essential oil floating up will be extracted.

However, the disadvantage of this method is the time of distillation for too long, about 6-12 hours, the essential oil price is not concentrated, it takes a lot of raw materials, fuel, and small distillation scale.

Overcoming this limitation, Dr. Tri used pressure-breaking technology to distill essential oil. After studying the device, he went to the lab to install two sterilization pots together, in which a pot made pressure, the pot again distilled normally. Use pressure on this side to push to distillation, then lock the valve. Finally, pressure broke the cells, ie essential oil bags in the leaves.

"The above technology system helps reduce the amount of water consumed in the production process to more than 80%, the distillation time is 2 hours per batch, while reducing labor costs, the device can be fully automated" , Mr. Tri said.

Scientific group and equipment cluster distilled citronella oil.

Thanks to this initial success, he and his colleagues continue to design industrial-scale distillation equipment, with 50-100 tons of lemon leaves a day.

During the study, his team pointed out that citronella not only adapted to drought in the northern hills and mountains, but was also tolerant of saltwater conditions in Tien Giang or Vinh Long, giving high yield and odor. Essential oils are quite special. This is very useful for agriculture in the context of increasingly complex climate change in Vietnam.

Besides lemon lemongrass , Dr. Tri found that in Vietnam and the world, there are also types of lemongrass specialized in foliage, suitable for drought hill areas. The problem now is the application of the technology with this lemongrass is suitable. The scientific team continued to experiment and luckily this method is perfectly suitable for distilling java citronella.

To help improve upland life, the research team proposed to intercrop with java citronella with rubber trees and some fruit trees."Rubber trees are usually planted 15 meters apart, where the bare land is intercropped with soybean or corn, it must be harvested annually, complex care, while drought tolerant, without much care, it also chases flies mosquitoes, snakes, " said Mr. Tri.

Before the situation of large amount of residues after distillation of essential oils at the present facilities has not been used effectively, mainly burning and spraying on the field causing environmental pollution, Mr. Tri and colleagues studied history. use it as an organic material to produce microbial fertilizer, limit the use of chemical fertilizers.

This micro-organic fertilizer is then used for citronella and other crops, returning the nutrients removed from the soil. In addition, there is a small amount of essential oil in this distillate residue, which can effectively repel insects.

Treatment of post-distilled lemongrass as raw material for micro-organic fertilizer production.

According to the research team, in addition to planting lemongrass for tubers to consume the domestic market, essential oil from citronella leaves for the medical industry; Plant protection products; processing industries such as cosmetics, soap production .

In terms of economic benefits, due to low investment in citronella planting, long and fast harvesting time, good resilience, the effectiveness of growing citronella is high, 7-8 times higher than rice. According to Mr. Tri's calculations, the profit from leaves and tubers on a hectare of lemon grass ranges from 90-110 million VND. In the area of ​​20 ha of citronella cultivation, an essential oil factory will earn profits from 1.5 to 1.6 billion VND per year.

Combining the closed process "planting lemongrass - collecting essential oil - fertilizer production" can bring about economic efficiency of about 143.6 million dong / year / ha.

After the discharge tree, Mr. Tri intends to experimentally apply technology to produce essential oils from other crops such as anise, cinnamon and melaleuca.