One significant challenge to our growing society is the recovery of market-value chemicals from water systems and waste streams. Ionic liquids can by readily developed as hydrophobic materials that can extract compounds from water in a biphasic system. Through the design of the cationic and anion components of ionic liquids, biocompatible ionic liquids are being used in an environmentally benign extraction method of compounds from water, including biofuels and rare earth metals as commodity chemicals. The ionic liquids were tested for extraction efficiency of several classes of compounds, including lanthanide and transition metals and large organic compounds. As these materials would potentially be used in the extraction from environmental samples and industrial effluents, the toxicity of the ionic liquid compounds was assessed towards several species of bacteria. Many of the ionic liquids showed minimal toxicity. The ionic liquids therefore present as a new approach to broad spectrum extraction processes, including the recovery of commodity materials in biofuels production or precious metal recovery.

Ionic liquid solvents for recovery and analysis of commodity chemicals

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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