Innovative applications Of ionic liquids in Chemistry and chemical engineering

During past few years, ionic liquids (ILs) have kept attracting much attention as green and designer media for chemical reactions. Room-temperature ILs have emerged as a potential replacement for organic solvents in catalytic processes on both laboratory and industrial scales [1, 2]. Effectively, ILs, among a unique set of chemical and physical properties, have no measurable vapor pressure, which lends them as ideal replacements for volatile, conventional organic solvents. The wide and readily accessible range of room-temperature ILs with corresponding variations in physical properties, prepared by simple structural modifications to the cations or changes in anions, offers the opportunity to design an ionic liquid-solvent system optimized for particular processes. Highlights recent advances of ILs are as versatile green engineering liquids in a variety of industrial applications including heat transfer fluids, azeotrope-breaking liquids, lubricants, electrolytes, liquid crystals, supported IL membranes, plasticizers, and more. This paper highlights specific examples of ionic liquid Innovative applications in chemistry and chemical engineering.