Industrial applications of ionic liquids (ILs)solvents that can serve as green alternatives to volatile organic compoundsare often hampered by their high cost. Solvent recycling provides a feasible pathway to recover IL solvents to reduce lifecycle costs. Herein, we demonstrate a continuous microfluidic process to purify metal-ion-loaded IL solvents, wherein Fe(III) ions are extracted from a prototypical IL, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (BMIM-NTf2), to deionized (DI) water with subsequent membrane separation of the IL and aqueous phases. Inline analytical tools, design of experiment statistical optimization, and a self-optimizing, modified Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm facilitate locating the best parametric operating conditions to optimize both ion extraction and physical phase separation. This process was then adapted to a more challenging purification application: recovery of the IL trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium bis(2,4,4-trimethyl-pentyl)phosphinate (Cyphos 104) from the rare-earth metal Nd(III). This application demonstrated that optimized conditions obtained from a single stage could be applied across a multistage process. Together, these results demonstrate that statistical and inline optimization tools can be used to identify working parameters for different flow systems with a variety of governing fluid properties, for example, viscosity and interfacial tension.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.