Green processing using ionic liquids and CO2

Lynnette A. Blanchard (), Dan Hancu, Eric J. Beckman and Joan F. Brennecke ()
Additional contact information
Lynnette A. Blanchard: University of Notre Dame
Dan Hancu: University of Pittsburgh
Eric J. Beckman: University of Pittsburgh
Joan F. Brennecke: University of Notre Dame

Nature, 1999, vol. 399, issue 6731, 28-29

Abstract: Abstract Many organic solvents evaporate into the atmosphere with detrimental effects on the environment and human health. But room-temperature ionic liquids, with low viscosity and no measurable vapour pressure1, can be used as environmentally benign media for a range of industrially important chemical processes2,3,4,5,6, despite uncertainties about thermal stability and sensitivity to oxygen and water. It is difficult to recover products, however, as extraction with water7 works only for hydrophilic products, distillation is not suitable for poorly volatile or thermally labile products, and liquid-liquid extraction using organic solvents results in cross-contamination. We find that non-volatile organic compounds can be extracted from ionic liquids using supercritical carbon dioxide, which is widely used to extract large organic compounds with minimal pollution8. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the liquid to facilitate extraction, but the ionic liquid does not dissolve in carbon dioxide, so pure product can be recovered.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/19887 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:399:y:1999:i:6731:d:10.1038_19887

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/19887

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().