ABSTRACT
Essential oils are highly concentrated substances extracted from plant parts which can be flowers, leaves, stems, roots, seeds, barks, resins, or fruits. These oils are often used for their flavor and their therapeutic or odoriferous properties, in a wide variety of products such as foods, medicines, and cosmetics. The aim of thisresearch isto extract and characterize essential oils obtained from lemongrass, cymbopogoncitratus leaves. Solvent extraction method was used for extraction of essential oils. After extraction, some of physicochemical properties of the extract were determined and the following result is obtained. The Acid value, Iodine value, Saponification value and Peroxide values are 4.84mg, 12.47mg, 436.20 mg KOH/g, and 4.09meq/kg respectively. The higher the acid value of oil, the lower storage quality and viceversa so that the lemongrasses oil has an excellent storage quality as well as it can be used for manufacturing cosmetics. The saponification value also indicates that the lemongrass essential oil has a potential to be an input for soap production. Keywords: Solvent extraction, essential oil, Acid value, Iodine value, Saponification value, Peroxide values, Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus).
