Chemistry Essay

An increasing interest and intensive research kick in been devoted towards judgement the chemistry of ionic liquids oer the past decade. These liquids be non any new and mystify extensively been used in organic separation and synthesis. With renewed interest towards these liquids, researchers defend started to realize fabrication uses of ionic liquids and now research efforts seduce been spread to other specialties at heart the umbrella of science and technology. piece research into ionic liquids has been limited to the salmagundi as esoteric compounds, other applications of ionic liquids continue to be agnise much(prenominal) as performance additives, bioreactor applications and in the designing of pharmaceutical compounds has original increasing recognition.Ionic liquids have been thought to be unripened although corrupting ionic liquids have been synthesized with ease. An example of these potentially life threatening liquids have cyanide as their sole anion and alk aloid as the anions1. Therefore, there seems to be a misunderstanding on the nature of ionic liquids which has in many times led to the poor definition of ionic liquids. A detailed understanding will generate new insights into sustainable exploitation of ionic liquids in industrial processes. Apart from ILs being praised for being thin solvents, they argon as well as good catalysts especially in biological systems although they take part in highly selective catalytic solvents2.Definition of Ionic LiquidsIonic liquids, abbreviate as IL comprise of a new crystallise of solvents that is in the main composed of ions (cations and anions). They ILs are regarded to be green solvents because of their properties much(prenominal) as negligibility to vaporisationisation pressure, high thermostability and non-inflammability. Due to these properties, new biotechnological applications are continuously being discovered. Among the biotechnological applications of ILs which have been develo ped include whole cell and enzymatic catalysis. While ILs have been labeled green, the label has recently been questioned and challenged after ILs were shown to decompose as relatively low heat intensities.ILs have also been shown to express many toxicity levels towards microbial cells as well as higher organisms. At the same time, it is possible to modify the physicochemical properties of ILs and come up with house decorator solvents with unique chemical structures3. Perhaps interventions required to make ILs retain their green label could be the fine tuning so that the toxicity drawbacks are addressed. Their applications need to be broadened in order to fully maximize their benefits to man. weighty properties of ILs have been investigated in order to understand this important class of solvents. However, not every ionic liquid will show similar properties as other classes of solvents. The most common properties of ILs which can be presented by this class of solvents include the l iquid range which is 3000C (-96-+2000C)4. ILs have also been shown to be excellent inorganic, organic and polymeric materials solvents. The acidic composition of ILs can generally be said to be superacids.Some ILs are highly water small and therefore have to be used in dry boxes. In contrast, other ILs are highly hydrophobic (water haters) and have high lineage stability. ILs have also shown high thermal stability up to temperatures of 2000C. vapor pressure at room temperature has not yet been estimated and is assumed negligible. While ILs are noninflammable, it has been shown recently that some can be explosive and this raises eyebrows over the tag, green solvents.At room temperature, ILs are basically salts with heavy phosphorous or nitrogenous organic rich organic cations with a elongated skeleton or chain of alkyl groups. Extensive research has been invested mainly in the imidazolium ILs especially the cations of 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium. The structures of these cations have also been studied extensively. ILs are cognize to be of dual functionality since they have both the cations and the anions. The most common anions of ILs include, the nitrates such as chlorides (Cl-) and bromides (Br-), chloroaluminates such as Al2Cl4- and Al2Cl7-, nitrates such as NO3-, tetrafluorophosphates BF6- hexafluorophosphates, PF6- and alkyl sulfates RSO4 such as ethyl sulfate C2H5SO4-.