Dear Issah Seidu ,

This may be attributed to the ability to solvate a large number of material

with high capacity of solvation meaning one can achieve high concentration ratio of the solute in the solution.

The other issue is that the solute can be easily extracted from the solution since these materials are easily volatile.

In summary they have good solvent functional performance compared to the other solvents.

Best wishes

I would assume it is because their ability to dissolve bothorganic and non-organic species..

Simplistically this comes down the hydhydroxide active group and the hydrocarbon tail.

As Abdelhalim abdelnaby Zekry mentioned though, this is comes down to the ability to solvate different species

Dear Issah,

this is a very interesting question of general interest. However, it is difficult to answer it in the very general way it was asked. You will certainly get more qualified answers when you specify what kind of extraction you have in mind. Quite often RG members are interested in extraction of natural products from plants and plant parts. In most cases the researchers are interested in extractiong e.g. polyphenols or they use the plants extracts for "green" syntheses of nanoparticles. In such cases methanol and ethanol have a number of important advantages. They are cheap, easy to handle and relatively non-toxic (of you you must not drink methanol!). Most important, however, is that both are polar solvents which are able to extract all polar components of plants, including e.g. polyphenols, flavonoids etc. Moreover, the boiling points of both alcohols are relatively low, so that they can easily evaporated from the extracts.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your research and best wishes, Frank Edelmann