Physicochemical Analysis Using Gas Chromatogrphy Mass Spectrophotometer (GCMS) on the Quality of Citronella Oil (Cymbopogon nardus L.)

Abstract

Indonesia is known as a country that has biological forests which can be used as a source of essential oils. The levels of chemical compounds that make up citronella oil are not fixed and depend on several factors such as distillation. Distillation using traditional methods is a production process that has been identical for generations used by farmers, usually this distillation uses wood fuel and takes 5 hours. Meanwhile, distillation with electrical energy only takes 4-5 hours. This research was conducted at the Laboratory of Chemical Analysis, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh. This research was conducted from January 2023 to June 2023. The results showed that distillation using the traditional method had 15 chemical compounds and consisted of 3 active ingredients, namely citronellal (42.48%), geraniol (17.60%) and citronellol ( 13.67%) while the results of the distillation by the electric method have 21 compounds and also consist of 3 active ingredient components, namely citronellal (40.87%), geraniol (16.53%) and citronellol (17.68%).