study of ethanol presence in some ornamental and aromatic plants using gas chromatography

Plants re-emit a substantial fraction of their assimilated carbon into theatmosphere as biogenic volatile organic compound. according to the presenceof relatively high amount of methanol in herbal distillates, finding different concentrationsof ethanol in such drinks is expectable, as several studies appearedthat produced ethanol by plants emits into the atmosphere as do methanol. in thisstudy, ethanol content of 30 industrial herbal distillates made by three differentcompanies was measured. for this purpose, some solutions with concentration of10000 mg l-1 were prepared from ethanol and methanol separately as originaland internal standard sources that in continue, different concentrations of standardswere prepared from ethanol solution and after it, 50 ?l methanol solution wasadded to all of the standards and samples as internal standard and then, all ofthem were examined with gc. the obtained results indicated that some of theherbal distillates contain ethanol. maximum and minimum amount of ethanolexisted in rosa damascena l., (rose water) with mean value 96.4 mg l-1 andsalix aegyptiaca l., distillate (only one sample had 15.5 mg l-1 and in two othersamples were not seen) respectively, while most of the examined samples hadno ethanol. presence of ethanol in some of the examined samples showed thatfurther study is necessary to achieve correct information about this subject.