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
enter image source here

ethanol
enter image source here

Related questions
See all questions in Polarity of Molecules
Impact of this question
15285 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License