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.[3]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.