Room temperature ionic liquids and their mixtures - a review

Room temperature ionic liquids are salts that are liquid at room temperature and their use as catalysts and catalytic support has been studied extensively. They are also being considered as "green solvents" for various separation processes. Recent measurements reported on the properties of pure ionic liquids and their mixtures, including gas and liquid solubility in common organic solvents will be reviewed. While some property values are in good agreement, some show large differences. These values will be compared and reasons for the discrepancies will be conjectured. Since traditional approaches to predicting the properties of fluid liquids require extensive LLE and VLE measurements, alternative predictive methods need to be explored. The predictions of the properties of mixtures of ionic liquids using COSMOtherm, an approach based on unimolecular quantum chemical calculations of the individual molecules, will be presented. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.