could contaminate the maltol or cause it to be unacceptable for use in food or personal care products it also does not create an environmental hazard such solute that remains in the product is easily washed cut of it the process also does not expose the maltol to conditions which could adversely affect the maltol itself as by thermal or chemical decomposition or otherwise if fir balsam is used as source material it retains its organoleptic properties 973 6 grams of resin which contained 8 92 maltol was loaded into a cylindrical jacketed steam heated glass separatory vessel the resin was sequentially extracted using a mechanical stirrer with two portions of 7 sodium chloride solution in water the volume of the aqueous phase was two liters each time the temperature of the resulting extraction mixture was maintained at 90 u00b0 c and the mixing time was three hours for each extraction stage after each stage the phases were allowed to separate the hot aqueous portions were drained filtered and placed into a refrigerator to crystallize out maltol precipitated crystals of maltol were filtered out at 4 u00b0 c 48 4 grams of crude maltol were recovered which still contained about 15 of moisture the residual concentration of the maltol in the resin after the two aqueous extraction stages.