The speciation of a family of inexpensive, easily prepared protonic ionic liquids, their physico-chemical properties and their performance as catalysts in the model esterification reaction have been correlated.

The synthesis and characterisation of new hydrogen-bond-rich ionic liquids and studies of their catalytic performance in Diels–Alder reactions are described. An increase in the number of hydroxyl groups present in the ionic liquid structure resulted in higher efficiency.

A facile strategy for the synthesis of nitrogendoped, porous carbon materials was developed, with the first use of carbohydrate ionic liquids and salts as versatile precursors. Transformation of carbohydrate (biomass) into ionic species serves as a strategy to obtain precursors combining properties of carbohydrates, like high carbon content with ionic liquid properties such as high thermal stability, negligible vapor pressure, and the possibility to incorporate nitrogen-rich moieties as cations or anions. With precise design of the precursors at the molecular level, carbon materials with high specific surface areas (up to 946 m 2 /g) and/or high N contents (up to 9.6 wt %) can be readily obtained. The resulting metal-free nitrogen-doped carbons exhibit a noticeable electrocatalytic activity toward the oxygen reduction reaction. The structure−property relationship between the organic precursors and derived carbon materials in terms of yield, N content, and morphology was investigated.

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A new family of herbicidal ionic liquids based on d-glucose and MCPA or 2,4-D anions has been synthesized and the physicochemical, surface active and herbicidal properties of the obtained salts were characterized.

The kinetics of polymerization of Bisphenol-A diglycidyl ether (DGEBA), a well-known epoxy resin, with two ionic amines 1-(3-aminopropyl)-3-butyl­imidazolium bis­(trifluoro­methyl­sulfonyl)­imide ([apbim]­[NTf2]) and the tetrabutyl­ammonium leucine ([N4444]­[Leu]) have been studied with the use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS) at various temperatures. We found many fundamental differences between the progress of this reaction with respect to the classical system (curing of epoxy resin with ordinary nonconducting hardeners). One of the most significant differences is related to the mechanism of polymerization. It is worthwhile to mention that usually the autocatalytic model is used to describe the curing of DGEBA with ordinary amines. However, herein, the kinetic curves followed a clearly exponential shape characteristic of first-order kinetics. We claim that the change in mechanism of polymerization is related to the presence of a conducting amine that acts as both the substrate and the catalyst of this specific chemical conversion. Also, it is presented that the pace of the reaction only weakly depends on temperature, which is reflected in the relatively low activation energy. On the other hand, the degree of monomer conversion stays around 45%–70% as typically reported for the polymerization of DGEBA with nonconducting hardeners. In addition, we measured the time evolution of dc conductivity as the reaction proceeded and observed that a change in this parameter correlates very well with the monomer conversion in contrast to the reaction of nonconducting systems. Finally, ionic conductivity of the resulted cured samples was investigated and found to be quite significant at the glass transition temperature with respect to other polymerized ionic liquids.

A new method for the chemo-enzymatic Baeyer–Villiger oxidation of cyclic ketones to lactones in the presence of a new heterogeneous nanobiocatalyst consisting of Candida antarctica lipase B immobilized on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) has been developed. To ensure safety and meet the contemporary environmental criteria nanobiocatalyst was used for the in situ generation of peracid, thereby avoiding the direct handling of dangerous peroxy substance. The reaction was carried out under mild conditions at 20–40 °C using 30% aq H2O2 as the primary oxidant, with octanoic acid as the precursor of peracid. The influence of the reaction parameters and various carbon materials as supports were studied. The activities of the new biocatalysts were compared with the benchmark Novozyme-435. Recycling studies demonstrated the possibility of utilizing the most active MWCNTs-lipase biocatalyst five times without any significant loss of activity. The main advantage of this study is the superior activity of the new nanobiocatalyst, what caused a significant reduction of reaction times compared to those previously reported in the literature.

BACKGROUND: Ionic liquids are regarded as future effective absorbents of CO 2 , however high viscosity of this medium limits its use in industry. To resolve the problem a mixture of alkanolamine, ionic liquids and water was proposed as a CO 2 absorbent and the influence of solution composition on the volume of CO 2 absorbed was determined. RESULTS:In most binary mixtures of ionic liquids and water tasted the presence of water does not affect the overall capacity of absorption mixture except for the 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate where each mol of water added to the mixture reduces the volume of CO 2 that could be absorbed by more than one mole. The capture of CO 2 using three-component systems of water/ionic liquid/monoethanolamine (MEA) was systematically investigated with two selected ionic liquids: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium octylsulfate. It was shown that the volume of CO 2 absorbed is linearly dependent on the mass fraction of components for 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium octylsulfate over the entire experimental domain whereas in 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate the interaction between ionic liquid and water substantially decreases the volume of CO 2 absorbed. CONCLUSIONS: The best results for CO 2 absorption were obtained using the three component system 1-butyl-3methylimidazolium acetate/monoethanolamine/water. Optimization of the composition of an IL-MEA-water mixture allows tuning of the properties of the medium. The CO 2 absorption capacity of the mixture is mainly a function of MEA concentration and, to a lesser degree, of the concentration of IL possessing chemisorption abilities. The presence of water decreases the viscosity of the mixture and therefore facilitates the application of IL-based media in industrial applications.