Tailor-designed deep eutectic liquids as a sustainable extraction media: An alternative to ionic liquids

Abstract

One of the main issues of Green Chemistry, encouraging innovative technologies, where incorporates solutions to reduce or eliminate existing pollution problems, is the development of novel green solvents. Therefore, design of environmentally friendly solvents has had a strategic preface in the framework of green technologies recently. When looking at the last 20 years, it is seen that Ionic Liquids (IL) has attracted attention as new generation green design solvents. However, IL has disadvantages such as toxicity, poor biological degradability and high cost, except for the green-labelled properties of solvents (volatile, non-flammable and reusability). Hence, efforts have been made to develop extremely inexpensive solvents at a minimal level of harm to the environment in addition to the present attractive properties of IL. Deep Eutectic Liquid (DEL), which has been lately introduced concept in the literature, is a novel tailor-made solvent. Furthermore, the relevant liquids exhibit physicochemical properties similar to those of conventional ionic liquids, but DELs are much cheaper and environmentally friendly. Due to its advantages, there is a growing interest in many of the research areas such as catalysis, organic synthesis, extraction processes, electrochemistry and material chemistry.

Keywords: Deep eutectic liquid; Designer solvent; Environmentally friendly solvent; Green chemistry; Ionic liquid.