The ethanol is a commonly used fuel, solvent and disinfectant and is also used to make other compounds. Industrial alcohol contains a small amount of methanol, and medical alcohol is ethanol with a concentration of about 75%. It is commonly used in the preparation of traditional Chinese medicine and tanning agents. It can also be used in the osmosis method. It can also be used in the dipping method, the dissolution method or the dilution method and extraction method.
The ethanol extraction refers to a kind of method taking ethanol as the solvent to extract and purify materials, which makes use of the solubility of ethanol. It is widely used in chemical experiments, chemical purification, chemical pharmaceutical and the production of TCM medicament.
What is Ethanol Extraction Process?
These four extraction methods can all extract ethanol efficiently. There are several steps in the ethanol extraction process, and they are as follows:
Step One — Soaking
Firstly, the dried plant is soaked by ethanol solvent, so that the target substances can be extracted out of sample materials. In the end of this step, you will get mixtures about ethanol solvent and the target substances.
Step Two — Separating
Now we have gotten the mixtures about ethanol solvent and the target substances, what we need to do in this step is to separate them. The method we usually use is to extract ethanol out, because ethanol is volatile. In the end of this step, you will get ethanol solvent and the target substances separately.
Step Three — Concentrating
We have gotten the pure target substances, and what we need to do for now is to concentrate it, in order to get the target substances with higher concentration and purification. And this is the final step in the ethanol extraction process.
Rotary evaporators, short steam distillation and other equipment can be used for ethanol extraction.
