Aims & Objectives of Liquid-Liquid Extraction

Liquid-liquid extractions are common experiments within both academic and commercial chemistry laboratories. As its name suggests, this type of extraction involves physically separating two liquids and, in most cases, drawing one off the other for further use or analysis. Although this technique has a huge array of potential applications both, within and outside the classroom, several aims and objectives underlie the general procedure.
  1. Separation and Identification

    • The objective of a liquid-liquid extraction is first and foremost to separate two or more components of a solution from one another. Doing so not only allows you to perform further analyses and procedures on either or both of said components, but also allows you to determine whether or not a certain compound is present in an unknown reagent. For example, if you have a light blue, opaque solution and want to know whether or not it contains nonwater-based components --- "alkanes," in chemistry jargon --- add a water-based compound to see if any separation occurs.

    Observation of Physical Properties

    • When two or more layers of liquid separate within a reaction chamber, you can instantly observe many of their physical properties. Perhaps most obvious --- and, depending on your experiment, most important --- among these is density, a metric which reflects how densely molecules pack themselves within solution. The component which floats on top of the other, by definition, has a lower density. Once separation occurs, you can also observe properties and characteristics such as color, opacity and the proportion in one which one solution exists in comparison to the other.

    Reagent Isolation

    • Another potential objective of liquid-liquid extraction is the isolation of one or more reagents for later use. This can be particularly useful for solutions you don't have on hand in their pure form. After separating layers, you can use a medicine dropper to draw off the top solution, either for use or to expose the bottom one. At this point, you can use the reagent of your choice as a reactant in a subsequent experiment or run further analyses on it.

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