It being a pollutant out of the question...can I extract oil from seeds by grinding the seeds then putting them in a filter paper that is in a funnel whose mouth is inside an erlenmeyer flask?
I'm going to use the resulting oil as a sample to test it against a kind of bacteria...(my paper's objective is just to know if the extract as an anti-bacterial substance is feasible)...will I get significant results?
About oil extraction with the use of hexane...?
Doubtful. Hexane is a very non-polar solvent. You likely will not extract much material in any one washing.
For doing this kind of extraction, there is a device called a Soxhlet extractor. This can be run continuously over a number of days and continuously washes the sample with a small quantity of solvent. However, a Soxhlet extractor is modestly expensive and you likely would need an organic chemistry lab to do the experiment. It isn't particularly complicated and I have done such experiments.
You can use a stronger solvent like acetone, methyl ethyl ketone or ethyl acetate. However, you may extract more than the essential oils that you wish.
If you don't have access to an organic chemistry lab, I might suggest that you contact a local college. They might be able and willing to help you.
My concern is that you would get negative results not because your basic idea is bad but because you didn't extract enough of the material of interest.
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