Deep Eutectic Solvents and Ionic Liquids for Green Extraction and Separation
This research community develops and applies deep eutectic solvents (DES) and ionic liquids as alternative media for extracting, separating, and processing chemical compounds, with a strong emphasis on replacing conventional organic solvents in biomass, food, and pharmaceutical applications.
The work centers on the design and application of choline chloride-based mixtures, natural deep eutectic solvents, and imidazolium-based ionic liquids. Key applications include the extraction of phenolic compounds, polysaccharides, and bioactive components from plant biomass, as well as the pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials for bioethanol production. The community also investigates the physicochemical properties of these mixtures, including hydrogen bonding and molecular dynamics, to optimize their use in solvent extraction, extractive distillation, and carbon dioxide capture. Recent efforts focus on hydrophobic variants and the sustainability assessment of these solvent systems.
The community is most prominent in research involving chlorine, where it accounts for 0.8% of all tracked chlorine papers, and bromine, representing 0.7% of bromine research. It also contributes significantly to hydrogen and nitrogen research, each comprising 0.2% of their respective fields.
The community comprises 8,872 papers, with the highest publication volume in the Journal of Molecular Liquids, followed by The Journal of Physical Chemistry B and Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
Recent work includes the development of deep eutectic solvents for e-waste recycling and hydrometallurgical metal recovery, as well as the use of DES-CTAB pretreatment to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass. New frameworks for sustainability assessment, such as the DES Ecoscale, are also emerging to quantify the environmental impact of these solvent systems.