Application of task-specific ionic liquids for intensified separations

Ionic liquids offer tremendous opportunities to intensify reactions and separations in process technologies by tuning their physical and chemical properties. Several ionic liquids are suitable for the separation of aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons. CO2 absorption behavior was influenced by the functionalized chains appended to the room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) cation. Ionic liquids seem able to combine the chemical features of amine solutions with the characteristic advantages of the physical solvents used for CO2 absorption.