В обзоре рассмотрены хроматографические и экстракционные свойства ацетонитрила и его смесей с водой. Обсуждено влияние состава смесей ацетонитрил -вода на такие свойства как плот-ность, вязкость, коэффициент проницаемости, показатель преломления, оптическая плотность, темпе-ратура кипения. Рассмотрено применение обобщенного критерия полярности ацетонитрила в оценке элюирующей способности подвижных фаз на основе смесей ацетонитрила с водой. Показаны пре-имущества и проблемы применения ацетонитрила как модификатора подвижной фазы в обращен-но-фазовой ВЭЖХ и как гидрофильного экстрагента в жидкостно-жидкостной экстракции. In 2018 the scientific community celebrates 115 years of discovery of the liquid chromatography method by M.S. Tsvet, and also 50 years since the development of the high-performance liquid chromatography method. The key component of the chromatographic sorbent-sorbate-eluent system, whose optimization is devoted to the authors' studies of the article, is the eluent. High-performance liquid chromatography has become an important method of analysis over the past decades. Acetonitrile is a unique solvent for chromatography. It is used as the main component for water-organic mobile phases in reversed-phase and hydrophilic HPLC. The review discusses the features of its physicochemical properties which should be taken into account in analytical practice. Effective methods of sample preparation are required for the analysis of biologically active substances in different matrices using HPLC. Methods of liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) of analytes from aqueous solutions with salting out and drying out; micro-LLE; dispersive micro-LLE, lowtemperature LLE, extraction by freezing, combined sorption-extraction method QuEChERS are considered. Acetonitrile is used for each of these sample preparation methods. The review discusses the effect of the composition of acetonitrile-water mixtures on such properties as density, viscosity, permeability coefficient, refractive index, optical density, boiling point. The relative polarity, eluting and solubilizing ability of aceto-