What are the Characteristics of a Solvent?

Solvents are not that difficult to understand, just that you need to have an interest in knowing and understanding the chemicals. Let’s just start with simple stuff. Solvents are that part of solution which dissolves a solute. For instance, we

have salt and water solutions. Here salt is solute and the water is solvent as it dissolved the other. Though we assume that solvents are liquid, there are cases when they can be found in the form of gas or solids.

When a solvent is dissolved in a solute than the end result is mixture. Usually, a solvent has different and unique characteristics that distinguish it from mixture. Mixtures that are not a solution, are very much different form solvents.

Here are some of the properties discussed for solvents:

Boiling Point:

One of the most important properties of solvent is the boiling point. It helps to determine the speed of evaporation of such solutions. Even a small amount of low boiling point solvents including the acetone or dichloromethane etc evaporate at faster pace even at room temperature. While there are solvents that have high boiling point like dimethyl sulfoxide or H2O that require higher temperature, air flow as well as application of vacuum in order to evaporate. According to Wikipedia:

• Low boilers: boiling point below 100 °C (boiling point of water)
• Medium boilers: between 100 °C and 150 °C
• High boilers: above 150 °C

Density

ACS solvents India states that solvents usually have lower density than water which means they tend to be lighter and form a separate layer on the top of water. One of the exceptions in such cases is the most of the hydrogenated solvents like

dichloromethane or chloroform that usually sink at the bottom of the container they are placed at while leaving the water at the top. These things are important to remember and these characteristics impact a lot during the synthesis.

Fire

Usually all the solvents are flammable or highly flammable and this usually depends on their volatility. There are some exceptions but negligible. Mixtures of some solvent vapors and air can explode and thus care should be taken while carrying mixing. Solvent vapors are much heavier than air and they usually sink it to bottom. They can even travel long distanced without being diluted. They can be found in the empty drums, cans, flash fire hazard areas and empty containers and that’s why such things must be kept upside down. They can also cause soil contamination if not dumped properly.

For the industries using solvents and similar chemicals, it is important to understand the characteristics of such solvents before carrying on any synthesis. HPLC solvents exporter provides you complete guide on how you can manage such chemicals without any hazards.

Labchemicals is an solvent supplier and exporters providing a wide range of chemicals and solvents of high principals and quality at affordable prices.