GC–MS Analysis of Essential Oil Extracted from Acori tatarinowii Rhizoma: An Experiment in Natural Product Analysis

A comprehensive undergraduate experiment about extraction, separation, and identification of essential oils (EOs) from a natural plant is described. Acori tatarinowii Rhizoma (ATR) was used as the raw plant material. Two devices (Soxhlet and Clevenger) with different extraction principles were employed for EO extraction from ATR, separately. The chemical compounds of the extracted EOs were separated and identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The differences in the chemical components obtained by the two extraction devices were compared. The experiment can give students a deep insight into the difference between the extraction methods. Additionally, the experiment can enable students to learn how to use GC–MS to identify the chemical structures of the extracted complex samples. The grouped students who performed this experiment gained a deep understanding of extraction and detection techniques, as well as the benefits of teamwork.