Why is acetone often used to extract fat rather than ethanol?

1 Answer
David Y.
May 1, 2015

Acetone is more of a non-polar solvent than ethanol. Fat (lipids) is essentially a non-polar molecule so is more soluble in acetone than in ethanol (a more polar solvent)

There are better solvents. It would depend on the fat molecule and what you were trying to separate, the medium and process. I hope the general answer is sufficient.

acetone
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ethanol
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