Physico Chemical Properties of Purified Mata Kucing Dammar Without Solvent

Mata kucing dammar has long become remarkable export commodity, most of which unfortunately is still in natural form(chunk-shappedexudates)obtainedfromthetappingof itshosttrees( ).Accordingly,suchdammar still contains large amount of impurities thereby lowering its qualities or trade values. Consequently, this necessitates a thorough purification attempt to enhance the dammar's added-value. The dammar purification prevalently uses organic solvent. However, the market demand for the solvent-free dammar products currently tends to increase commensurate with the advancement in dammar usage for drugs/ medicine and food industries. In relevant, purification of mata-kucing dammar was experimented using manual heating system, rather than organic solvent. Result revealed physico-chemical propertiesof theheat-purifieddammarwerenotsignificantlydifferentfromthoseof naturaldammar(withoutpurification treatment)aswellasof thesolvent-purifieddammar.Even,withrespecttoashcontent(impurities)andtolueneinsolubility, the heat-purified dammar seemed to be better than the natural dammar. GC-MS analysis revealed there were five major chemical compounds with relatively large contents in heat-purified dammar. Such phenomena were similar to those in the naturaldammar,withthecontentsof thosecompoundsintheheat-purifieddammarslightlyhigher.