Measurements and correlation of viscosities and conductivities for the mixtures of imidazolium ionic liquids with molecular solutes

Ionic liquids have potentials as green materials in a variety of fields. it is the case that in their application in industry, ionic liquids are often used together with molecular solutes/solvents. In this paper, systematical measurements of viscosities and conductivities for the binary and quasi-binary mixtures of ionic liquids with molecular solutes were performed over the whole concentration range. The variation tendency of viscosities/conductivities with composition of the mixtures was explained through the disruption of molecular solutes to ionic association or aggregation of the ionic liquids. A exponential equation with empirical parameter A suggested initially by Seddon et al. was used to describe the dependence of viscosities on the mole fraction of molecular solutes, and the physical meaning of A was analyzed based on a theoretical equation deduced from rate process theory. At the same time, another exponential equation with parameter C was proposed to correlate the experimental date of the product of conductivity and viscosity. and satisfactory results were obtained over the entire range of concentration. The main factors affecting the parameter C were discussed. It is expected that the new data and correlation equations reported in this work will be useful for the application of ionic liquids in chemical industry. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.