Aedimus

I'll definately do so. The idea I was investigating was more of a way of making it easy for a consumer to build their own scents and than to create a community around that. I designed a product that would make the mixing etc simple, but if the consumer doesn't achieve some sort of near instant gratification, I'm afraid it'll fall short. FYI in case anyone cares, I also posted the question on a perfume forum called"bass notes" and found this: Apparently the process is called "maceration" Re: What happens during maceration? As soon as you have your mix together and let it sit, chemical reactions start going on. These are mostly reversible equilibrium reactions ⇌, which are concentration dependent. Depending on your mix, you can get the following type of reactions: Transesterifications: Ester_11 + Water ⇌ Alcohol_1 + Acid_1 Ester_22 + Water ⇌ Alcohol_2 + Acid_2 Alcohol_1 + Acid_2 ⇌ Ester_12 + Water Alcohol_2 + Acid_1 ⇌ Ester_21 + Water but also: Ethanol + Acid_1 ⇌ Ester_e1 + Water Ethanol + Acid_2 ⇌ Ester_e2 + Water So your esters will mix up chemically eventually. I've always been guessing that this is part of the process that makes a scent "rounder", as they say. There are also (hemi-)acetalisations: Aldehyde + Ethanol ⇌ Hemiacetal Ketone + Ethanol ⇌ Hemiacetal and subsequently Hemiacetal + Ethanol ⇌ Acetal + Water or sometimes intramolecularly: Hemiacetal ⇌ Acetal + Water Now hemiacetals will decay to ethanol and aldehyde or ketone on skin, whereas the process with the acetals is much slower. This is why some aldehydes are available as acetals. They smell often very similar to the aldehyde, but a bit sharper (to my nose at least). As a third important example, there is the formation of imines, aka Schiff Bases or Schiff's Bases: Aldehyde + Amine ⇌ Imine + Water could also work for ketones Aldehyde + Ketone ⇌ Imine + Water Typically, the amine is methyl anthranilate (if there is some in the mix at all), it is one of the very few compounds that have contain -NH₂ group. The Imines also decay on skin. But the process is slow, so your evaporation rate is slowed down. And as always: imines of methyl anthranilate are very often strongly coloured, so if a perfume goes dark during maceration, it is because of the formation of those imines. These processes go on, until "equilibrium is reached", i.e. the concentrations of all the reaction participants corresponds to how fast the corresponding reactions are. But attention: at equilibrium, the proportions will stay the same, but the reactions will still be going on! For the transesterification I made a calculated estimation once that the equilibrium should be reached in about three months. Still, it is not a linear process, rather an exponential one: after one month, equilibrium could be reached at an extent of 66% (rather than 33%). So the truth is, that whether you use naturals or synthetics, the constituents of a perfume actually are reactive and there will be chemical reactions going on. Well within the perfume, but also outside the bottle, also on and with skin. (The question is how much this affects the individual.)

Thank you for responding. You'll use either alcohol or some oil like Jojoba oil as a base for the scent, and than once the essential oils are mixed with the base, they're supposed to sit for a few weeks, and the scent will mature and actually hold onto the skin as well. I'm interested in the chemical process that is occuring mostly because the extended waiting time is counter productive when making small batches, and if the scent changes after 2 weeks, testing small batches of scents until you find the right proportions becomes wasteful. The goal would be to produce a process where you could combine scents, test and adjust proportions of the mix immediately, and than use the perfume within 24 hours. This is why I was wondering if for example setting the fluid in a centrifuge, or adding an additional ingredient might speed up the maturing process . I can't actually do anything unless I know the actual science on a chemical level though.

No one has any idea?

So I was doing research online and saw that when you make home-made perfumes and cologne, once mixing the essential oils with the alcohol or oils before you use the scent it should sit for 2 weeks to a month before using it. The question I can't find an answer to was what exactly is happening in this period of time where the compound is steeping, and is there anything that can be done to speed it up (different base compound, temperatures, agitation, diffusing etc.)?