Diluents:

The reasons for using a diluent are new clear to you and they can be enumerated as under:

i) They are mainly used to decrease the viscosity of the extractant. Generally, the extractants used for commercial solvent extraction processes are viscous liquids and they cannot be used as such.

ii) Depending upon the metal to be loaded, an appropriate concentration of the extractant is to be used. Thus, the diluent provides the solvent for preparing the solution of the extractant of the desired concentration.

iii) Another role of the diluent is to decrease the emulsion formation tendencies. A number of extractants are surface active agents and at high concentration, tend to emulsify specially at high agitations.

iv) The diluent improves the dispersion and coalescene properties of the solvent.

These are two very important aspects of a solvent extraction process.