2. Characteristics of natural resins

2.1 Chemical composition

Chemically, natural resins are complex mixtures of several classes of compounds, the main ones being listed below.

• Essential oils (e.g. pine turpentine)

  They are made up of volatile compounds that can be extracted, generally by steam distillation. Essential oils contain mostly mono- and sesquiterpene constituents (hydrocarbons, alcohols, esters, carbonyl derivatives, oxides...), such as the pinenes in turpentine, with the chemical formula : .