Simultaneous distillation-extraction: from birth to maturity?review

Together with a brief history of the development of simultaneous distillation–extraction (SDE), this review intends to provide the reader with practical guidelines that can be drawn from the literature, and to help the analyst in the choice of optimum experimental conditions adapted to a given sample preparation problem. This paper starts from the original apparatus of Likens and Nickerson, includes designs for micro-scale experiments, and ends up with the version operating under vacuum, and another for large-scale operations. The question of artifact formation is covered, together with proposed solutions for their prevention. Examples are given from applications in the field of flavours, fragrances and the environment. To better illustrate capabilities and limits of SDE, comparisons of SDE with other techniques of sample preparation are presented.