Extraction of citral from Litsea cubeba fruits and determination of citral

By microwave irradiation, citral was obtained from Litsea cubeba fruits, the yield being in average 2.48% higher than that by traditional distillation in a current of steam. Gas chromatographic determination of the components of Litsea cubeba oil and citral was conducted in capillary column with temperature programming and FID by internal normalization. Experimental results showed that the content of citral in Litsea cubeba oil was 68.64%, the recovery was 101.3%, coefficient of variation was 0.28%, and linear correlation was 0.9997. This method is as accurate as that using acetophenone as the internal standard. This method is simpler, more accurate and has better reproducibility than GB 11424 - 89.