This paper describes a chromatographic method to fractionate volatile oils and to identify their sesquiterpenic constituents. The fractionation process includes flash chromatography over silica gel and chromatography over silica gel/AgNO3, utilising pentane, CH2Cl2 and/or acetone as eluents. GC chromatograms were obtained in order to get the relative percentage of each constituent in the volatile oils, to get the retention time value of them as well as to analyse and combine the fractions eluted from the columns. Such procedure afford mixtures of sesquiterpenes which are analysed by GC/MS, 13C and ¹H NMR.
volatile oil; chromatographic methods; 13C NMR of sesquiterpenes
