Abstract: To optimize the extraction process of volatile oil in Liquidambar formosana, and analyze the components of volatile oil, orthogonal experiment was conducted using volume of volatile oil as index and granularity of leaf, soaking time and extracting time as affecting factors. The oil was analyzed by GC-MS. The experiment results indicated that the optimum extraction technology condition is the following:beating without soaking and extracting for 6h. Chemical components were analyzed by GC-MS, 51 peaks were separated and 47 compounds which accounted for 98.11% of crude volatile oil were identified. The result shows, that among 47 compounds, 30 compounds are terpines, 14 compounds are aliphatics and 3 compounds are aromatics.The major constituents were β-pinene(21.18%), α-pinene(20.70%), and (E)-2-hexenal(7.64%), limonene (7.59%), β-caryophyllene(6.08%), etc.