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Ionic Liquids for Liquid Separations, at the 236th ACS National Meeting
The symposium “Ionic Liquids: Liquid Separations” was held at the 236th National Meeting and Exposition, in Philadelphia on the 17th of August 2008. Seven lectures were presented by an international slate of high-profile speakers, starting with G. Wytze Meindersma of Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands and Urszula Domañska-Zelazna of Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. Meindersma spoke about the separation of aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons with ionic liquids. Domañska-Zelazna spoke about their use for separating a variety of organic compounds, giving detailed quantitative data. It was particularly appropriate that the Petroleum Research Fund helped to support these headline speakers because of the emphasis in their lectures on the separation of hydrocarbons from petroleum.
The field of ionic liquids has seen an exponential increase in the number of publications within the past 5 years. The unique properties of ionic liquids make them particularly interesting compounds that have the potential to offer many advantages in industrial applications. In the case of Prof. Meindersma, new classes of task-specific ionic liquids are being developed to tackle industrially difficult separations including aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and methane, and carbon dioxide absorption. At the conclusion of Prof. Meindersma's talk, an important discussion regarding cost and thermal stability characteristics of the ionic liquid took place. Prof. Domañska-Zelazna's research results demonstrated the use of chromatographic and spectrophometric methods to measure important physical properties of ionic liquids. For example, her team utilizes inverse gas chromatographic methods to determine infinite dilution activity coefficients of various organic molecules in ionic liquids. These thermodynamic parameters are important for characterizing the behavior of liquid mixtures and the selection of solvents for extraction and extractive distillation. Both speakers highlighted the important considerations of using ionic liquids in large scale applications as well as indicated future work that is desperately needed in the field. A wide variety of topics within liquid separations were addressed by an international team of experts.
The other lecturers at the symposium were:
- Sheng Dai, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, describing the fundamentals of solvation in ionic liquids and relating them to separation efficacies.
- Constance Schall, University of Toledo, describing the pretreatment of lignocellulose with ionic liquids for the production of biofuels.
- Alain Berthod, University of Lyon 1, France, describing the utility of ionic liquids in reverse phase liquid chromatography.
- Apryll M. Stalcup, University of Cincinnati, describing surface-confined ionic liquid stationary phases for high performance liquid chromatography.
- Neil D. Danielson, Miami University, describing the characterization and chromatography of proteins using alkylammonium formate ionic liquids.
Based on the high attendance and the positive feedback from session speakers and attendees, this session was a success!
The session was one of several sessions on ionic liquids, many of which were also well attended.
- Sun am. Gas Separations – Margarida Costa Gomes (Blaise Pascal), Mark B. Shiflett (DuPont)
- Sun pm. Liquid Separations – Jared Anderson (Toledo), Philip Jessop (Queen's, Canada)
- Mon am. Interfacial Properties - Steve Baldelli (Houston), Alessandro Podesta (Milan)
- Mon pm. Use in Sensors and Actuators - Gary Baker (Oak Ridge), Xiangqun Zeng (Oakland University)
- Tue am. Materials Synthesis in ILs - Jennifer Anthony (Kansas State), Anja Mudring (Bochum)
- Tue pm. Thermophysical Properties - Joe Magee (NIST), Luis Rebelo (ITQB Lisbon)
- Wed am. Molecular Simulations - Pietro Ballone (QUILL Belfast), Ed Maginn (Notre Dame)
- Wed pm. Pharmaceutical Applications - Doug MacFarlane (Monash), Robin D. Rogers (QUILL Belfast/Alabama)
- Thu am. Industrial Applications – Peter Schwab (Evonik), Megan B. Turner (BASF)
- Thu pm. General Session - James H. Davis, Jr. (South Alabama), Peter Wasserscheid (Erlangen)
- Tuesday night. POSTER SESSION (QUILL Belfast/Alabama)
