From the dissolution to the extraction of carbohydrates using ionic liquids

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is an alternative raw material for the production of biofuels. The conversion of biomass to biofuels begins with pretreatment to produce amorphous cellulose which can be hydrolysed to sugars. The use of ionic liquids has been described as a new potentially viable development in this area. Nevertheless, phase equilibria with biomass-derived compounds and also sugars, is still lacking in the literature. To overcome the lack of experimental data on phase equilibria of biomass carbohydrates in ionic liquids, the solubility of fructose, sucrose and lactose in ionic liquids was measured within a temperature range from 280 K to 390 K. Solubility data were successfully correlated using NRTL and UNIQUAC thermodynamic models. In this work, the possibility of extracting carbohydrates from ionic liquids using ethanol has also been evaluated. Results indicate that ethanol could be used as an antisolvent to separate sugars from ionic liquids.

Solubility of Bioactive, Inorganic and Polymeric Solids in Ionic Liquids — Experimental and Prediction Perspectives

“…Monosaccharides (especially glucose and fructose) and disaccharides (mainly sucrose), after cellulose, are the most studied carbohydrates in ILs. Table 18 and 19 summarizes the solubility data for disaccharides [85,133,[144][145][146] and monosaccharides [85,86,[144][145][146][147][148], respectively. Solubility of sugar in a given IL decreases in the following order: D-(-)-fructose > D-(+)-glucose > sucrose.…”

“…An addition of an antisolvent to a binary solution (solute+solvent) causes a reduction in the original solubility of the solute in the binary solution, leading to its crystallization and precipitation. Very recently, the method was adopted for separation of other systems, differing in carbohydrates and ILs [150,144,148]. The ability to predict whether a given IL dissolves a particular carbohydrate or not is of outmost interest.…”

“…The Kamlet-Taft parameters (α, hydrogen bond acidity; β, hydrogen bond basicity; and π*, polarity) are determined by measuring the UV-VIS spectra of dyes when dissolved in a solvent of interest. It was suggested that solubility of carbohydrates increases with an increase of ILs basicity (ILs that are capable of dissolving carbohydrates are generally characterized by high hydrogenbond basicity parameter; β > 0.8), and polarity [41,56,74,119,126,144,148]. The potential of COSMO-RS-based screening of ILs with respect to their dissolving power for cellulose was evaluated in the pioneer research of Kahlen et al [151].…”

“…In case of smaller carbohydrates, Carneiro et al were the first group to correlate the solubility data of monosaccharides in ILs using the NRTL and UNIQUAC thermodynamic models [147]. Following their success, other works on application of NRTL and UNIQUAC thermodynamic models for correlation of solubilities of glucose [86,148,144], fructose [86,144], sucrose and lactose [144] have been reported. Very recently, perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT) was applied to model experimental data on solubility of glucose, fructose and sucrose [85,154,155].This approach occurred to be more promising since it showed better predictive capacity and quite reasonable accuracy.…”

Dissolution of a colloidal particle in an oscillatory flow

“…Better understanding of dissolution of a colloidal particle to the surrounding liquid environment is of great importance in broad industrial applications. There exist lots of relevant chemical processes in liquid-liquid, solid-liquid, and gas-liquid systems ranging from absorbtion, extraction, leaching, drying, crystallization, dissolution, to combustion of solid and liquid fuels [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In pharmaceutical sciences, investigations on the reconstitution of various pharmaceutical composition and dosage forms based on dissolution methods are essential for practical purposes [10][11][12][13].…”