Question

Why extraction is preferred to distillation? And What are the situations where extraction can be used instead of distillation?

Answer 1

Both are physical seperation process which is most commonly used of equal importance.

To extract pure form of solvent we can use liq - liq extraction of multiple stages where as in distillation heating is used.

Extraction is preferred over distillation for seperation application that would not be cost effective or inefficient to extract the pure component.

Field of application of extraction:highly thermaly senitive components, seperation of azeotropic mixtures, extraction of component present in electrolytic solution.