Popularization
30 November 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., Chimiste – Popularization Essential oils are worth quite a lot of money. It so happens that, in order to boost profits, unscrupulous people alter oils in various ways. This “Adulterants and you” series is there to introduce you to some of the adulterations we encounter. This is because not all of
Popularization
23 November 2015
Alexis St-Gelais – Popularization Polar: I am not reffering to the winter cold that has settled around here in Saguenay a few weeks ago… I am rather speaking of a concept that can be helpful to understand many chemical phenomena, to which I will certainly plentily refer to in the future on this blog. Polarity
Popularization
15 October 2015
Hubert Marceau, chimiste – Popularization As more and more consumers are aware of the existence of essential oil adulteration, distributors are starting to offer GC reports with their oils. We believe that this is a good step for multiple reasons. It shows that the company has made its best efforts to offer to its customers
Popularization
17 September 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization Although it constitutes a large part of our activities at PhytoChemia, essential oils analyses are in fact a special case for chemists. Indeed, it is one of the only cases (along with hydrosols, fatty acids methyl esters and a handful of other applications) where the approximation “concentration ≈ %
Popularization
31 August 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc, Chimiste – Popularization Essential oils are worth quite a lot of money. It so happens that, in order to boost profits, unscrupulous people alter oils in various ways. This “Adulterants and you” series is there to introduce you to some of the adulterations we encounter. This is because not all of
Plant card
20 August 2015
Laurie Caron, Chemist, M.Sc. – Plant card Latin name: Clintonia borealis (Ait) Raf. Common names: Yellow Clintonia, snake poison, bluebead-lily. In the boreal forest of Quebec, Canada, it’s possible to find this very common plant. Clintonia borealis is a perennial herb of the lily family. The plant has small blue fruits located on a long
Research notes
24 July 2015
Alexis St-Gelais – Research Notes The hexane extract (concrete) of young male flowers of American willow (Salix discolor Muhlenberg) was analysed by gas chromatography. Beside the waxy compounds, the main detected constituents are floral-scented alcohols and salicylaldehyde. The results are a good example of the usefulness of processing concretes into absolutes. In our region, one of
Research notes
11 July 2015
Alexis St-Gelais – Research Note PhytoChemia is an uncommon business. We launched the company while still completing our master degrees, which meant we were knee deep in fundamental research in chemistry. One of the motivations – especially for me – of setting up our laboratory was to have our very own scientific playground. As chemists,
Research notes
Research Note – Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste Essential oils can sometimes be surprising. It so happens that well-known species that have been frequently studied yield, in particular conditions, peculiar volatile molecules that are otherwise not widely recognized to be characteristic of the plant. When such an observation is made, it is useful to publish
Discoveries
16 June 2015
Laurie Caron, Chemist, M.Sc. – Discoveries Since we obtained our Canadian licence to analyse medical marijuana, we connected to the businesses of this world. As with everything, news travel fast, and finding reliable references in this industry is not always an easy thing. Some companies like LiftCannabis stand out more than others. Lift has a high presence