Petroleum Ether

About This Product

Petroleum ether, also called light petroleum, petroleum benzin or ligroin, carries CAS number 8032-32-4. It is a clear, colourless, highly volatile mixture of light aliphatic hydrocarbons, mainly pentanes and hexanes, insoluble in water and an effective solvent for fats, oils and waxes. Despite the name it contains no ether oxygen at all; the term is a historical one, from a time when any very volatile, flammable solvent was loosely called an ether. Because it is a mixture, it is defined by its boiling range rather than by a single composition, and the cut chosen determines how quickly it evaporates and how easily it is recovered. Low-boiling cuts, around 30 to 60 °C, are used where the solvent must be removed at low temperature, for example from heat-sensitive extracts; higher cuts, around 60 to 90 or 90 to 120 °C, evaporate more slowly and lose less in open handling. It is the extraction solvent named in many standard methods for crude fat, where its low polarity extracts triglycerides while leaving most sugars, proteins and other polar material behind. It is used in fat and oil determination, in the extraction of natural products and essential oils, as an eluent in chromatography, as a solvent for oils, waxes and resins, and in cleaning and degreasing. Bio Green Chem supplies petroleum ether at 99 percent minimum in 140 kg drums or ISO tanks, with the boiling range and full specification agreed with the quotation. Depending on the cut it is highly or extremely flammable, it is an aspiration hazard and its vapour causes drowsiness; handle to the safety data sheet.