The Importance of Chemical Solvents to the Industrial Industry
Chemical solvents are some of the most important components towards our daily lives. Chemical solvent distributors play a large role in making sure that the industry is supplied with high-grade solvents. However, many do not understand the importance of chemicals within the industrial sector. Let us share with you today some basic information about chemical solvents and also why they are important to us.
What Are Solvents?
Going back to basics, we should first understand what a solvent is. A solvent is a substance that dissolves a solute without altering its properties. Most of the time solvents are used whenever you have to deal with materials that are difficult to be used in its original form. As an example, it is more difficult to drink hot chocolate in powder form. Now imagine dissolving a few teaspoons of tasty hot chocolate powder into hot water. The dry powder is now dissolved in to the solution but it still retains that rich chocolate taste. In this case, the dry powder is the solute while the hot water acts as a solvent. While it sounds simple enough, it is a vital component in chemistry and without solvents, life as we know it would not even exist.
Known as a universal solvent, water is the best example of why solvents are important. Without the ability to dissolve substances and minerals, our blood – which is primarily water, cannot transport the necessary nutrients to sustain life. In the industrial sector, chemical solvents have always been a vital component especially for industrial chemical distributors and chemical product suppliers.
Why Are Chemical Solvents Important?
- Personal Care Products
Chemical solvents are the main components behind many cosmetic and personal care products. When designing a new product, most likely you would have to go through custom chemical blending involving many different ingredients. These ingredients could be in different forms such as liquid, gas and solids, rendering them difficult to mix together. A chemical solvent serves as a medium to combine all those materials to form a homogenous solution. Many solvents are also volatile which makes them evaporate very quickly. This is a very useful property with its most wide-spread use in nail polish. The solvent mixes all the materials together nicely and when applied on your nails, will then evaporate quickly to leave behind the colours. Nail polish removers also act as solvents by simply reversing the action by dissolving them again.
- Paint and Print
Traditionally, printing is done by pressing printing blocks dipped with ink onto paper or any surface. However, this method is slow as it requires the paint to dry properly so as to avoid any smudging. Modern day printing is done on a large scale basis and simply having to wait for the ink to dry is definitely not feasible. Chemical solvents are widely used in printing magazines, food labels and more due to them evaporating quickly while leaving behind a vibrant print that will not smudge. For paints, chemical solvents make sure that the paint is mixed to form a homogenous solution. This helps to prevent uneven pigment distribution for a clean and flawless finish.
- Manufacturing
Chemical solvent distributors are much sought after as they provide many different solvents crucial to many different manufacturing processes. The ability of solvents to properly dissolve materials together makes it indispensible especially to specialty chemical distributors. A distinct feature of certain solvents is that they are mostly designed to dissolve certain materials only while leaving others untouched. Besides being a melting pot to mix different materials together, another characteristic that makes solvents important is the ability to filter out undesired compounds or by-products. This makes invaluable in manufacturing products such as medicine which requires high purity. Pharmaceutical products such as penicillin use solvents in the production process to selectively remove impurities.
- Cleaning
For many chemical product suppliers and also industrial chemical distributors, they are definitely no strangers to using solvents as cleaning agents. In fact, many of our detergents and cleaning liquids act as solvents to dissolve those hard-to-remove grease stains. On an industrial scale, these solvents are used as a method to properly clean their equipment. Many chemical compounds leave behind residue or waste that is hard to clean using conventional methods. Solvents are effective at doing so as it will remove all stains and residue while leaving the rest untouched. Just make sure that the solvent that you use will not react or dissolve anything it is not meant to.
Conclusion
Chemical solvents are indispensible materials in the industrial sector. Its unique ability to dissolve specific materials makes it a very useful component in various industrial processes. For many different industries, the absence of solvents will make operations practically impossible. This is why companies like ChemStation Asia are much sought after in the industrial sector. They have been experts in custom chemical blending. Their expertise in dealing with chemical solvents has made them one of the top specialty chemical distributors in the region.
