Question

Hi everyone,

Can organic solvent (chloroform:methanol) mix with water under any condition?

Answer 1

Yes because if the solute (organic compound) is mixed into pure water, it moves from a area of high concentration to low concentration. Any type of diffusion reaction like this tries to mantain equalibrium. In this case the mixture would always dissolve making it what is called isotonic - which is an equal amount of solute to solvent

Answer 2

yaa its is possible when biosurfactants or molecules having hydrophilic and hydrophobic center in it is mixed with water and organic solvent..

methanol readily dissolves in water ... as the size of the side chain increases its solubility decreases...
chloroform is also slightly polar it also dissolves in water.

Answer 3

Thanks people. Actually, I have a solvent system which I need to separate. I carried out the decantation technique to extract oil from a sample but I didn't have time to separate the water from the organic layer. So, I left them in the fridge at 4 degrees and when I took them out for separation purposes, they got mixed up at room temperature within 5mins. I really need to separate the organic layer from the water. How can I do that without losing any of the organic layer - which implies my oil, cause I need to quantify it and calculate a percentage.

Answer 4

you can go for distillation process and separate the organic layer from water.