The other day SWIM was rendering tallow for use in candle- and soap making. It is awfully simple; he took a big amount of bovine fat from the abattoir and he boiled it with water for 2 hours. He then strained all the pieces of meat/cartilage/whatever out and he was left with a liquid containing the water and the dissolved fatty acids (tallow). When the strained liquid was left to sit for some time it separated in two layers. The top one was the tallow and the bottom one the water. He refrigerated the whole mixture, tallow got pretty solid and he scooped it out of the watery mixture.

Now, provided that someone has a good amount of orange peels, would a similar procedure work? I.e. take the orange peels, mash them and boil them in water for 1-2 hours (most likely less) to extract everything. Would any layers separate? In theory it should, giving one a crude top layer of orange peel fats, terpenes and other crap.

SWIM's not asking for making any big volumes of limonene or whatever by this method. Just for the fun of science!

If you boil it most of the terpenes will evaporate. Collecting is possible via distillation as I am sure you know.

Hmmm.....

I guess you're right on the evaporation point albeit the terpenes' SIWM will give this method a try using lower incubation temperatures, maybe around 80C just for the fun of it!

That must have smelled nicely
Yes, steam destillation is the way to go, today I tried to steam distill DMT from root bark, The principle worked but for now the yield is too tiny to take it seriously

It would be fun to try this for a few ml of homemade limonene; for something useful truckloads of orange peels would be needed.
And the peels have to be peeled: the white stuff removed. An anti-foaming agent must be added to the boiling flask...