GC/MS DETERMINATION OF VOLATILE COMPONENTS IN CORTEX CINNAMOMI AFTER SEPARATION BY SIMULTANEOUS DISTILLATION AND EXTRACTION

Sample of bark of Cinnamomum cassia presl.was heated with deionized water in microwave oven and its volatile components were distilled and extracted simultaneously with redistilled ether in a special,self-made apparatus.After removing ether in the extract in a rotary evaporator,a transparent,yellow liquid with special fragrance was obtained,which contains the volatile components of the sample.The recovery was about 6.5%.GC/MS was applied for the identification and quantitative determination of components in the yellow liquid,and by the help of hyphenated computer technique,and by calculation with the peak-area-normalization method 27 compounds were identified,in which the content of cinnamaldehyde amounted to 94.36%.A separate portion of the volatile oil (i.e.the yellow liquid) was taken for a further separation of cinnamaldehyde by addition decomposition,that is to treat the volalite oil with NaHSO3 in a microwave oven,keeping the temperature not over 10 ℃,until the addition product of cinnamaldehyde was separated.Cinnamaldehyde was then recovered by hydrolysis of the addition product with 0.1 mol·L-1 HCl,and its composition and structure were analyzed and verified by IR and MS.