or sent to solvent storage similarly the raffinate and extract oils may be further processed in order to obtain more useful products therefrom the water added to the extraction phase via lines 16 and or 20 may be either relatively solvent free water or may be a portion of water containing extraction solvent from another part of the solvent recovery process such as the extract distillation zone overheads or overheads from steam stripping towers not shown if steam stripping is employed to remove the final traces of solvent from the raffinate and extract oils the effectiveness of employing water to reduce and minimize thermal decomposition of nmp is illustrated by the following examples in each experiment of this example nmp was heated in a stainless steel autoclave under nitrogen pressure to temperatures of from 700 u00b0 to 800 u00b0 f for from 3 to 24 hours with the nmp containing from 0 1 to 2 0 lv water at the end of each experiment the autoclave was cooled opened and the contents filtered the nmp content of the filtrate was determined by gas chromatographic analysis and the amount of nmp that decomposed was calculated by difference the decomposition reaction constant k was then calculated for an assumed approximate first order reaction according to the following equation equ1 where t reaction time the results of the experiment are shown in table 1 it can be seen that as little as 0 3 lv water reduced thermal decomposition.