The separation of aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes) from C 4 to C 10 aliphatic hydrocarbon mixtures is challenging since these hydrocarbons have boiling points in a close range and several combinations form azeotropes. In this work, we investigated the separation of toluene from heptane by extraction with ionic liquids. , are a factor of 1.5 -2.5 higher compared to those obtained with sulfolane (S tol/hept = 30.9, D tol = 0.31 at 40 -C), which is the most industrially used solvent for the extraction of aromatic hydrocarbons from a mixed aromatic/aliphatic hydrocarbon stream. From these five ionic liquids, [mebupy]BF 4 appeared to be the most suitable, because of a combination of a high toluene distribution coefficient (D tol = 0.44) and a high toluene/heptane selectivity (S tol/hept = 53.6). Therefore, with [mebupy]BF 4 also extraction experiments with other aromatic/aliphatic combinations (benzene/n-hexane, ethylbenzene/n-octane and m-xylene/n-octane) were carried out. The aromatic/aliphatic selectivities were all in the same range, from which it can be concluded that the toluene/heptane mixture is a representative model system for the aromatic/aliphatic separation. D

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