Applications of Ionic Liquids in Carboxylic Acids Separation

Folic Acid Ionic-Liquids-Based Separation: Extraction and Modelling

Folic acid (vitamin B9) is an essential micronutrient for human health. It can be obtained using different biological pathways as a competitive option for chemical synthesis, but the price of its separation is the key obstacle preventing the implementation of biological methods on a broad scale. Published studies have confirmed that ionic liquids can be used to separate organic compounds. In this article, we investigated folic acid separation by analyzing 5 ionic liquids (CYPHOS IL103, CYPHOS IL104, [HMIM][PF₆], [BMIM][PF₆], [OMIM][PF₆]) and 3 organic solvents (heptane, chloroform, and octanol) as the extraction medium. The best obtained results indicated that ionic liquids are potentially valuable for the recovery of vitamin B9 from diluted aqueous solutions as fermentation broths; the efficiency of the process reached 99.56% for 120 g/L CYPHOS IL103 dissolved in heptane and pH 4 of the aqueous folic acid solution. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) were combined with Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) for modelling the process, considering its characteristics.

An Ionic Supported Liquid Membrane for the Recovery of Bisphenol A from Aqueous Solution

In this work, a flat supported liquid membrane (FSLM) was applied for the extraction of bisphenol A (BPA) from aqueous solutions, using an ionic liquid as a carrier. The liquid membrane consists of tricaprylmethylammonium chloride (aliquat 336^®) diluted in 2-octanol. Furthermore, to obtain the best transport efficiency, the impacts of various experimental parameters were investigated. These parameters included aliquat 336^® concentration, the concentration of BPA in the feed phase, the pH of the feed phase, the concentration of NaOH in the receiving phase, the polymeric support nature, the percentage of extractant in the organic phase, and the solvent nature. The optimum conditions of the experiment were 50% (v/v) aliquat 336^®/2-octanol as the organic phase, a transport time of 8 h, and 1 × 10^-2 mol L^-1 NaOH as the receiving phase. The BPA was successfully recovered (the recovery percentage was about 89%). Supported liquid membrane-based aliquat 336^®/2-octanol displayed an acceptable stability with re-impregnation after 5 days of operation.