Steam distillation is the most commonly method in extracting pepper essential oil ,which can avoid the essential oil decomposition, hydrolysis or polymerization at high temperature for a long time, so that the quality and the extraction of essential oil has been improved.
This experiment exacts pepper essential oil with steam distillation and confirms the best processing condition in orthogonal experiment. The 5 factors affecting the extraction rate were analyzed by single factor experiment and the orthogonal experiment based on the single factor experiment,This experiment, which uses escherichia coli, staphylococcus aureus as the tested strains, also studies its antibacterial activity. Optimal conditions by single factor experiments were extracted from 40 standard sieve, 60 ℃ drying temperature, NaCl content is 0g, material ratio of 1:12, extraction time 5h. Orthogonal experiment results show:distillated time 5h, mesh sieve number 40 and NaCl 0g. The content of the pepper essential oil is 2.92% by the optimal conditions. The best inhibitory effect of essential oils is on escherichia coli and then is on yeast.