Pure hexane is used in laboratories. Most of the hexane used in industry is mixed with similar chemicals in products known as solvents. Common names for some of these solvents are "commercial hexane", "mixed hexanes", "petroleum ether", and "petroleum naphtha". An older name for these types of solvents is "petroleum benzene". Several hundred million pounds of hexane are produced in the United States each year in the form of these solvents. The major use for solvents containing hexane is to extract vegetable oils from crops such as soybeans. They are also used as cleaning agents in the printing, textile, furniture and shoemaking industries. Certain kinds of special glues used in the roofing and the shoe and leather industries also contain hexane. Several consumer products contain hexane. For example, gasoline contains about 1-3% hexane. Hexane is also present in rubber cement.
The term may refer to any of four other structural isomers with that formula, or to a mixture of them. In the IUPAC nomenclature, however, hexane is the unbranched isomer (n-hexane); the other four structures are named as methylated derivatives of pentane and butane. IUPAC also uses the term as the root of many compounds with a linear six-carbon backbone, such as 2-methylhexane C7H16, which is also called "isoheptane".
Hexanes are significant constituents of gasoline. They are all colorless liquids at room temperature, with boiling points between 50 and 70 °C, with gasoline-like odor. They are widely used as cheap, relatively safe, largely unreactive, and easily evaporated non-polar solvents.
Uses
In industry, hexanes are used in the formulation of glues for shoes, leather products, and roofing. They are also used to extract cooking oils from seeds, for cleansing and degreasing all sorts of items, and in textile manufacturing.
A typical laboratory use of hexanes is to extract oil and grease contaminants from water and soil for analysis. Since hexane cannot be easily deprotonated, it is used in the laboratory for reactions that involve very strong bases, such as the preparation of organolithiums, e.g. Butyllithiums are typically supplied as a hexane solution.
In many applications (especially pharmaceutical), the use of n-hexane is being phased out due to its long term toxicity, and often replaced by n-heptane, which will not form the toxic (hexane-2,5-dione) metabolite.
Production
Hexanes are chiefly obtained by the refining of crude oil. The exact composition of the fraction depends largely on the source of the oil (crude or reformed) and the constraints of the refining. The industrial product (usually around 50% by weight of the straight-chain isomer) is the fraction boiling at 65–70 °C.
Packing
Our packing is either in drums of 160L or Jerkins of 5L
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