Week 4b Chemistry - Frankincense

This post is supposed to be about Green Chemistry, and I'll tie it in at the end.  But I just wanted to share some pictures of the Boswellia project friends and I did this past weekend...

Frankincense (Boswellia spp.) is known as Ru Xiang in TCM.  It is in the Regulate Blood, Invigorate Blood category and is excellent for moving blood and Qi, relieving pain, reducing swelling, healing the gums, mouth and throat and expelling Wind-Damp painful obstruction.  Western pharmacological science identifies boswellic acid to be the 'active ingredient' behind most of frankincense's healing potential.  Frankincense is an oleogum resin, which means it has three main components, that is, volatile oil, gum, and resin.  The boswellic acid is concentrated in the resin portion, so the goal was to separate the gum from the resin.

The gum is water soluble, the resin is not, so the first step was to heat water to 100 C in a bain-marie.


Then the frankincense (powdered) was added, sifted on top, not too much, since the operation works much better if you have a high water to powder ratio.  We used both Boswellia frereana and Boswellia sacra.  B. sacra was a superior product, but I'm pretty sure it is the B. frereana pictured here.


Stir... (the photo below is from a round done without the bain-marie for comparison)


The water turns an opaque, somewhat milky translucent color as the gum is extracted and the resin coagulates on the top.



The resin is collected and set on parchment paper, then set out in the sun to dry.


The concentrated resin can be dissolved into a carrier oil for topical application.


Ok, so back to thoughts about Green Chemistry.  In the process of separating the gum from the resin, it was clear that the loss of volatiles to the atmosphere was undesirable waste.  Far better to recreate the operation with the aim of achieving atom economy and capture the volatiles with appropriate apparatus.  Then both the resin and the volatiles can be recombined in the final product.

Comments

  1. CalijamJune 4, 2019 at 11:34 PM

    So, is the resin you made similar to what is in the jar in the herb room? I make medicinal salves for muscle/sinew issues. Many of my recipes include Ru Xiang and Mo Yao, which I typically infuse in oil over a very low heat for 3 days. Someone recently suggested that I heat the oil enough to melt the resins into the oil. I'm not so sure about that, so I'd love to get your thoughts on that and any others you may have on upping the mojo!

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    Replies
    1. DmitriusJune 6, 2019 at 10:10 PM

      I haven't looked in the herb room to check but Ru Xiang is typically sold as a whole oleogum resin, ie in its natural state. The process I described ups the boswellic acid concentration by removing the gum, hence a teaspoon of my dried resin is far more concentrated than a teaspoon of powdered ru xiang. So if that's what you are after then yeah, I'd give it a shot. Actually, I would do it to the Mo Yao as well, combine the two and see what you think. Compare it to a regular batch you have.

      Bensky mentions ru xiang "applied topically as an ointment or powder". With mo yao as a paste. With xiong huang and she xiang as a powder for chronic nonhealing ulcerations and wounds. The actual preparations haven't been mentioned, but elsewhere he writes "Unprepared frankincense (sheng ru xiang) is generally used externally, as its volatile oil is somewhat toxic and can irritate the stomach and cause nausea. The prepared forms are preferred for internal use." He then goes on to describe 'vinegar-prepared frankincense' which probably reduces the volatiles to innocuous amounts and perhaps converts the remainder to less noxious compounds, and more importantly, leaves the resin and the boswellic acid behind for a much more potent and palatable internal medicament.

      This study of topical application used fractions of whole ru xiang:
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24725029

      This study compared oral and topical applications of boswellic acid:
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3992997/

      good luck, share your results when you're at that point!

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