Comarison of the Effectiveness of Citronella Oil Distillation with and without the Addition of a Burner: Literature Review

Abstract

Citronella essential oil is an important commodity in the agro-industrial sector, but the distillation process at the MSME level is still dominated by single-boiler technology with limited heat sources, resulting in low yields, long distillation times, and high energy consumption. Simple innovations such as the addition of a burner or a dual-burner system to the boiler have been identified as a technical solution to improve heat stability and vapor pressure. This article presents a literature review of three studies evaluating the application of an additional burner to the citronella oil distillation process and compares them with several conventional distillation studies without a burner for the same commodity. The results show that the dual-burner system provides consistent improvements in distillation performance parameters. The addition of a burner can accelerate the distillation process by 0.17% - 0.4% or an increase of 28-66%. These improvements are influenced by more stable heat distribution, higher vapor pressure, and accelerated vapor penetration into the material matrix. In contrast, the literature on burnerless distillation shows oil yields ranging from 0.60–0.75% with a distillation time of 280–320 minutes, while the dual burner system is able to achieve yields of 0.75–0.80% with a time of 250–270 minutes at similar capacities and distillation methods. This study confirms that the addition of a burner is a simple yet effective technical intervention in increasing the efficiency of citronella oil distillation at the MSME scale. These findings form the basis for the development of further experimental research on the HH2 (1 boiler 2 kettles) distillation model with an additional burner as the main variable for increasing production capacity and quality of essential oils.