Recent Advances of Using Ionic Liquids for Biopolymer Extraction and Processing

Abstract

The evolution of petroleum‐derived polymers is one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century. Although the significant economic gains from this industrial model of resource utilization are achieved, the environmental impacts are fatal. One of the principles of sustainable development is to replace such polymers with potential alternatives derived from renewable materials. Biopolymers derived from natural resources afford a new, versatile, environmentally benign feedstock that could exhibit closed‐loop life cycles as part of a future material's industrial ecology. However, the solubility and processability of biopolymer materials provoke a serious bottleneck owing to their dense networks of inter ‐ and intramolecular bondings and structural heterogeneity. Recently, ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as promising green solvents and acquired augmented appreciation for their peerless power of biopolymer processing. Among the fourteen principle of green chemistry, the two key elements encourage the exploitation of renewable raw materials by using environmentally benign solvents that cover in dissolution of biopolymers using ILs. This mini review represents a brief overview of the comprehensive ILs assisted extraction and processing of various biopolymeric materials for value‐added applications.

WO3 and Ionic Liquids: A Synergic Pair for Pollutant Gas Sensing and Desulfurization

“…Indeed, they are able to dissolve both organic and inorganic small solutes, but also polymeric materials. In the latter case, they proved very efficient in dissolving natural polymers hard to solubilize in water or organic solvents, like cellulose and lignin [61,62].…”

Marine-Derived Polymers in Ionic Liquids: Architectures Development and Biomedical Applications

“…The abundance of marine microalgae and the skeletons of crustaceans is large, but its poor solubility in conventional solvents restricts the efficient extraction of its value compounds. Nevertheless, there are some reports on ILs as extraction mediums for polysaccharides from marine residues [5,7,22,32,33]. Details about the structures, properties, and strategies involving the use of ILs on the dissolution and processing of selected marine polymers are made in the following sections.…”

“…(Bmim)(Cl) has been used as an environmentally friendly solvent to prepare chitosan/cellulose biocomposites sorbents for industrial effluent treatments [22]. Moreover, due to its strong interactions with negatively charged entities, including lipids and proteins, IL/chitosan-based aerogels are used to stabilize the complexes, with DNA fragments being good choices for gene delivery systems [66].…”

“…Particularly, the use of ILs to extract marine polysaccharides like agarose, chitin, carrageenan from their sources, residues, or even waste is a sustainable approach that has been indicated as easy and highly efficient, as compared to the conventional methods of extraction [7,22]. Besides polymer extraction, many studies have also shown the potential of ILs as suitable platforms for the production of 2D and 3D-based marine polymers, namely gels, films, micro/nanoparticles, and sponges.…”

Ionic liquid assisted polyetheretherketone‐multiwalled carbon nanotubes nanocomposites: An environmentally friendly approach

“…20 Enhanced thermal stability, 21 negligible volatility, excellent compatibility, and remarkable solubility towards various polymeric materials are unique characteristics of ILs. 22 Several studies showed that ILs have been effectively utilized for the dispersion of CNTs and other nanofillers due to cation-π and π-π stacking interactions with CNTs. 23 Carrion et al 24 6 ] were fabricated with enhanced electrical conductivity owing to the formation of CNTs network.…”