No Arabic abstract
Room temperature ionic liquids show potential as an alternative to conventional organic membrane solvents mainly due to their properties of low vapor pressure, low volatility and they are often stable. In the present work, the technical feasibilities of room temperature ionic liquids as bulk liquid membranes for phenol removal were investigated experimentally. Three ionic liquids with high hydrophobicity were used and their phenol removal efficiency, membrane stability and membrane loss were studied. Besides that, the effects of several parameters, namely feed phase pH, feed concentration, NaOH concentration and stirring speeds on the performance of best ionic liquid membrane were also evaluated. Lastly, an optimization study on bulk ionic liquid membrane was conducted and the maximum phenol removal efficiency was compared with the organic liquid membranes. The preliminary study shows that high phenol extraction and stripping efficiencies of 96.21% and 98.10%, respectively can be achieved by ionic liquid membrane with a low membrane loss which offers a better choice to organic membrane solvents.
The percentage removal of phenol from aqueous solution by emulsion liquid membrane and emulsion leakage was investigated experimentally for various parameters such as membrane:internal phase ratio, membrane:external phase ratio, emulsification speed, emulsification time, carrier concentration, surfactant concentration and internal agent concentration. These parameters strongly influence the percentage removal of phenol and emulsion leakage. Under optimum membrane properties, the percentage removal of phenol was as high as 98.33%, with emulsion leakage of 1.25%. It was also found that the necessity of carrier for enhancing phenol removal was strongly dependent on the internal agent concentration.
Steric hindered frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) have been shown to activate hydrogen molecules, and their reactivity is strongly determined by the geometric parameters of the Lewis acid s and bases. A recent experimental study showed that ionic liquids (ILs) could largely improve the effective configuration of FLPs. However, the detailed mechanistic profile is still unclear. Herein, we performed a molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, aimi ng to reveal the effects of ILs on the structures of FLPs, and to present a rule for selecting more efficient reaction media. For this purpose, mixture systems were adopt consisting of the ILs [Cnmim][NTf2] (n= 6, 10, 14), and the typical FLP (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 . Radial distribution function (RDF) results show that toluene competes with (tBu)3P to interact with B(C6F5)3 , resulting in a relatively low effective (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 complex. [Cnmim][NTf2] is more intended to form a solvated shell surrounding the (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 , which increases the amount of effective FLPs. Spatial distribution function (SDF) results show that toluene formed a continuum solvation shell, which hinders the interactions of (tBu)3P and B(C6F5)3 , while [Cnmim][NTf2] leave a relatively large empty space, which is accessible by (tBu3)P molecules, resulting in a higher probability of Lewis acids and bases interactions. Lastly, we find that the longer alkyl chain length of[Cnmim] cations, the higher probability of effective FLPs.
Ionic liquids are promising candidates for electrolytes in energy-storage systems. We demonstrate that mixing two ionic liquids allows to precisely tune their physical properties, like the dc conductivity. Moreover, these mixtures enable the gradual modification of the fragility parameter, which is believed to be a measure of the complexity of the energy landscape in supercooled liquids. The physical origin of this index is still under debate; therefore, mixing ionic liquids can provide further insights. From the chemical point of view, tuning ionic liquids via mixing is an easy and thus an economic way. For this study, we performed detailed investigations by broadband dielectric spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry on two mixing series of ionic liquids. One series combines an imidazole based with a pyridine based ionic liquid and the other two different anions in an imidazole based ionic liquid. The analysis of the glass-transition temperatures and the thorough evaluations of the measured dielectric permittivity and conductivity spectra reveal that the dynamics in mixtures of ionic liquids are well defined by the fractions of their parent compounds.
Hydrogen bonds (HBs) play a crucial role in the physicochemical properties of ionic liquids (ILs). At present, HBs between cations and anions (Ca-An) or between cations (Ca-Ca) in ILs have been reported extensively. Here, we provided DFT evidences for the exists of HBs between anions (An-An) in the IL 1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-3-methylimidazolium 4-(2-hydroxyethyl)imidazolide [HEMIm][HEIm]. The thermodynamics stabilities of anionic, cationic, and H2O dimers together with ionic pairs were studied by potential energy scans. The results show that the cation-anion pair is the most stable one, while the HB in anionic dimer possesses similar thermodynamics stability to the water dimer. The further geometric, spectral and electronic structure analyses demonstrate that the inter-anionic HB meets the general theoretical criteria of traditional HBs. The strength order of four HBs in complexes is cation-anion pair > H2O dimer = cationic dimer > anionic dimer. The energy decomposition analysis indicates that induction and dispersion interactions are the crucial factors to overcome strong Coulomb repulsions, forming inter-anionic HBs. Lastly, the presence of inter-anionic HBs in ionic cluster has been confirmed by a global minimum search for a system containing two ionic pairs. Even though hydroxyl-functionalized cations are more likely to form HBs with anions, there still have inter-anionic HBs between hydroxyl groups in the low-lying structures. Our studies broaden the understanding of HBs in ionic liquids and support the recently proposed concept of anti-electrostatic HBs.
The material dispersion of the [Ckmim][BF4] (k = 2,3,4,6,7,8,10) family of ionic liquids is measured at several temperatures over a broad spectral range from 300 nm to 1550 nm. The experimental curves are fitted to a modified three-resonance Sellmeier model to understand the effect of temperature and alkyl chain length in the dispersion. From the parameters of the fitting, we analyze the influence that the different constituents of these ionic liquids have in the dispersion behaviour. In addition, a semi-empirical approach combining simulated electronic polarizabilities and experimental densities for predicting the material dispersion is successfully tested by direct comparison with the experimental results. The limitations of this method are analyzed in terms of the structure of the ionic liquids. The results of this work aim to increase our knowledge about how the structure of an ionic liquid influences its material dispersion. Understanding this influence is fundamental to produce ionic liquids with tailored optical properties.