Essential oils testing

The quality of essential oils impacts on saleability and profit. Our chemistry testing laboratories can provide a comprehensive testing service for your product.

Tests and services available

See Chemical Ecology and Essential Oil Research Unit for information on essential oils analysis tests.

Tea tree oil

Tea Tree oil (oil of Melaleuca alternifolia) is a commodity well known for its antibacterial and medicinal properties and as such is an important agricultural crop. For an oil to be sold as 'Tea Tree' oil it must conform to a set of physical and chemical standards as laid out in the Australian Standard AS2782-2009 Oil of Melaleuca, terpinen-4-ol type (Tea Tree Oil).

We offer the following physical and chemical tests:

• relative density
• refractive index
• optical rotation
• solubility
• component analysis by gas chromatography

The Australian Standard tests can be done individually without reference to the Standard, but for tea tree oil the results must fall within the specified ranges if they are to be classified as tea tree oil.

Other oils

Our laboratory also provides a service for the determination of the percentage of the main chemical components of other essential oils, including:

• Backhousia citriodora (lemon myrtle)
• Leptospermum petersonii (lemon-scented teatree)
• Eucalyptus species
• Anetholea (Backhousia) anisata (aniseed myrtle)
• Melaleuca ericifolia (swamp paperbark)

Other services

Other services available are:

• extraction of tea tree oil from leaf samples for determination of the chemical constituents;
• percentage of tea tree oil in aqueous solutions;
• percentage of oil in distillation waters, which allows our clients to examine the efficiency of their distillation procedures.