Liquid solvents dissolve other materials to create a solution. Water is the most common and widely used solvent, but many organic solvents are also used in industry. Dipropylene glycol is an example of an organic solvent used in various products. Solvents can pose health risks, but they are still widely used. Organic solvents have at least one carbon and one hydrogen atom in their structure and can dissolve a wide range of compounds. The coal tar industry started the production of organic solvents, which have replaced by chlorinated solvents. Most liquid solvents pose some health hazard.
A liquid solvent is any type of liquid that serves to dissolve another liquid, gas, or solid material to create a mixture known as a solution. Water is the most common liquid solvent in nature and the most widely used solvent in industry. There are many other types of solvents used commercially as well, and most are organic, which means they are chemicals built on the molecular bonds of the element carbon.
Dipropylene glycol is an example of an organic solvent commonly used in industry. A chemical’s degree of solvency, or ability to mix easily with other chemicals, often determines its uses as a liquid solvent. Commercially, solvents are used extensively as plasticizers in the manufacture of various plastic compounds, where they serve to make the plastic somewhat pliable and soft, and it is here that most organic solvents have industrial value. The more versatile a liquid solvent is, the more widely it is used, and dipropylene glycol is used as a blend component in everything from dyes and paints to hydraulic fluids. Many chemicals intended to be applied in liquid form and then dried quickly, such as solvent inks, often use intermediate chemicals that have high volatility and evaporate quickly, such as dipropylene glycol.
Solvents can often pose health risks, as many of them contain chemical components of dangerous compounds such as benzene. The main and broad definition of an organic solvent, however, is that it has at least one carbon atom and one hydrogen atom in its structure. This includes many alcohol-based solvents such as methanol and isopropyl alcohol. Acetates are another common form of liquid solvent, relatively non-toxic and based on acetic acid esters such as butyl acetate. They can have a fairly simple molecular structure, like ethyl acetate, with a chemical formula of CH3COOCH2CH3.
Any liquid solvent produced in industry will share a class of common characteristics. These include volatility, as they are often chemicals intended to facilitate a process such as cleaning through evaporation, lipophilicity or the ability to dissolve fat-like compounds, and low molecular weight so they mix easily with other chemicals . Organic solvents fit well into these categories and are capable of dissolving a wide range of compounds from oils and fats to resins and rubber.
The coal tar industry of the late 19th century started the production of organic solvents. Coal tar is a viscous black liquid produced from the distillation of coal that contains chemicals used in many solvents, such as benzene and phenols. Chlorinated solvents replaced many of these compounds in the 20th century, but they have equally toxic elements and, if burned, can produce carcinogenic dioxin compounds.
In general, the nature of any liquid solvent can span a wide range of safe or hazardous chemical groups. Because of their propensity to easily evaporate into the air or be absorbed through the skin, most pose some sort of health hazard to exposed workers and people living in locations where they may be sources of groundwater contamination or air pollution. Many thousands of types of liquid solvents have been produced since 2011, but, as with most chemicals, only a very small minority of these have been tested individually or together for their inherent health risks.
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