“…For liquid-liquid extraction, the selection of extractant is of importance, which can significantly affect extraction performance. Usually, organic solvents are considered as extractants in the extraction process, such as esters (Abu Al-Rub and Datta 1999;Zheng et al 2016;Wu et al 2008;Sun et al 2017;Liu et al 2018b), ethers (Swanepoel and Schwarz 2017;Letcher et al 1992), heavy alcohols (Wang and Liu 2012;Xu et al 2016;Gilani et al 2012a, b;Yang et al 2013) and ketones (Cháfer et al 2012(Cháfer et al , 2014. However, the organic solvents have limitations in chemical separation applications due to their volatility, toxicity and flammability, and the organic solvents should be recovered by distillation with more energy consumption.…”