Making Lamp Berger Fragrance Oils?

stanclone

January 19, 20191 found this helpful

Not Debbie downer as much as Missy Misinformed. You can use essential oils, but there are some caveats.

First - the flashpoint is the temperature at which there is enough vapour produced in air to ignite with a real ignition source - a flame or a spark for example.

For isopropyl 99% thats about 12celcius, vs 50 to 60celcius for almost all essential oils.

Secondly essential oils can be diluted by alcohols, ethanol is common as its got a low odour, isoproply alcohold (IPA) 91 or 99 can be used but the smell is much stronger. Some essential oils just literally break down into a bad smelling substance when put in IPA, so be aware of that.

The only other downside is that some essential oils, although mostly dissolved in the IPA, will leave a residue on the wick ceramic, especially if too much essential oil is used, and that can have an off smell on subsequent lightings.

So yes you can put a few drops of your essential oil into IPA and use it in the lamp and you will not risk burning your house down any more than cooking with oil in your frying pan.

Pghgirl40
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 196 Feedbacks

January 19, 20190 found this helpful

I like that title!! Yes, sometimes I am Missy Misnformed but I am fine with that, since learning is a lifelong process!

This is good info about the oils. I hope people understand it and are careful with them. But I still will never use them and will always tell people to use extreme caution when using them.

As a caveat, I am fine with using them carefully like putting lavender essential oils on a sachet in my pillow case, or keeping a bottle of peppermint at my desk when I feel stressed. Those to me are awesome, but burning them, not in my world.

You could not pay me a million dollars to use essential oils to scent a room. Never! Why, because in the late 1980s/early 1990s, one of my first experiences using "soothing" essential oils in a burner, it flashed and caught fire. If it wasn't for the quick thinking of my roommate and a good fire extinguisher, I could have burned down an apartment building. Thank G-d, all it did was ruin a pair of drapes.

There are too many folks out there who may not understand what they are doing and mix and match essential oils and other products where they shouldn't (i.e. substituting, not following recipes, recipes that are not correct, etc.).

Your example of it being as safe as cooking oil bought tears to my eyes. Just this past October, there was a fire that killed an elderly couple who lived a few miles from us. They died from smoke inhalation caused by a frying pan of oil overheating and catching on fire.

So yes, I am a Debbie Downer too sometimes and I am fine with that title too!! I know there is danger everywhere and accidents happen. This is why I will always be out there preaching safety first and learning...so I have as much info as possible to help people make good choices!