Til: vit. ansatte ved IKP
Hello,
Ionic liquids is a quite hot topic these days, and here follows a
report a recent workshop by
Stathis Skouras.
Stathis works with Sigurd Skogestad in the area of azeotropic batch
distillation. He will finish his Ph.D. by the end of 2003, and is looking
for a job..
Ionic liquids are claimed to have large potential in many areas, for
example as entrainers in distillation, but are at present very
costly.
Workshop on ’Applications of Ionic Liquids II’, October
2003.
This was the second workshop on Ionic Liquids arranged in
Germany. The first one was in Rostock in 2001 and the next one will be in
Salzburg (Austria) in 2005. The workshop was organized by the Institute
of Metallurgy in the Technical University of Clausthal.
Clausthal-Zellefeld is a small town in the Harz mountain region about
100km east of Hannover. The town used to be a mining center in the past
but the production was stopped in the beginning of the 90’s. Thus, the
future of the town and its ca 2500 students is not anymore very
bright.
There were around 60 participants mainly from Germany, few people
from Austria and of course me from Norway. The official language of the
workshop was changed from German to English not only because of me but
also because of some new foreign PhD students from Russia, France, etc.
Most of the participants were chemists, few were chemical engineers and
few were industrial participants.
The welcome lecture was given by the organiser
Prof. Frank
Endres who introduced us to the world of Ionic Liquids (ILs).
ILs
are salts composed of organic cations and mostly inorganic anions.
They are liquid over a wide range of temperature with melting points
lower than 100C and even in ambient temperatures. The interest in ILs is
increasing bevaus they are
- good solvents for both organic and inorganics,
- non volatile,
- non flammable,
- polar but weakly coordinating,
- thermally stable
- less toxic than usual organic solvents.
The first publication on ILs was in 1992 and in a period of 10 years
this number increased to 500. This indicates the increasing interest in
ILs both in the academia and the industry.
There were 15 oral presentations and 6 poster contributions. I will
give the title and the background of the presenter for all presentations.
I will try to make a rough classification and I will give more details
for those presenations I found more interesting. However, if you want
additional information, you can get the abstracts by contacting
me.
APPLICATIONS
1
. Electrosynthesis of Nanocrystallic Materials (Harald
Natter, University of Saarbrucken, Physical Chemistry)
2.
Applications of Ionic Liquids in Electrochemistry (Gerhard E.
Nauer, TU Wien, Physical Chemistry)
3.
Separation of azeotropic mixtures by extractive distillation
(Wolfgang Arlt, TU Berlin, Thermodynamics, Phase Equilibria,
etc)
One of the main reasons I travelled to Germany since I am working on
azeotropic distillation. I was rather dissapointed by a guy that is
always a good presenter. He decided to give a general lecture on
distillation for undergraduates, since most of the participants were not
engineers. He started by presenting the distillation process, continued
with McCabe-Thiele diagram and concentrated on calculation of the
equilibrium (VLE) line and the peculiarities when azeotropic systems are
involved. He ended by referring to his PhD student who will give more
details on breaking azeotropes with ILs.
Carsten Jork, the PhD student of Prof. W. Arlt had a better
presentation. He showed how the IL interacts with the original azeotropic
components and result in a VLE line that doesn’t exhibit azeotropic
behaviour anymore. The simulations of the whole separation scheme with
the extractive column and the recovery of the IL section were not very
clear. From our discussion I got the idea that their research is still on
the level of estimating the physical properties of the mixtures. Their
knowledge on the thermodynamic properties of ILs is very limited and they
perform experiments for estimating the properties. Few people (including
the people from the Dortmund Data Bank) are trying to develop reliable
description and description models for IL in real mixtures. When this
issue is solved then they can concentrate on the simulation aspects.
Preliminary simulations exhibit 30% energy savings mainly because of the
simplified entrainer recovery unit. However, these savings cannot be
translated in cost savings at the moment because of the very high prices
of the IL (entrainer agent).
Generally, a lot of work has to be done on the basics before we move to
applications and he admitted that it is not easy to get people involved
in the area because BASF is sponsoring the project and they want to have
the patenting rights before anything is published. Thus, the academic
people are not very willing to invest their time in the area.
4.
Functionalization and applications of carbon nanotubes (Rene
Wilhelm, TU Clausthal)
5.
Biocatalysis in ionic liquids (Franka Ganske, University of
Greifswald, Technical Chemistry and Biotechnology).
Biocatalysis is one of the areas where ILs find a lot of applications as
alternatives to traditional organic solvents. This lecture was about
using new ILs as tailor-made solvents by varying the length cation alkyl
and the type of the inorganic anion. In addition, aspects like
purification and recovery of the IL solvent were discussed.
6.
Nanofiltration of solutions with ionic liquids (Jan Krockel,
University of Rostock, Department of Chemistry)
ILs are preferred as solvents in many reactions because of their
negligible volatility. When the reaction products are volatiles they can
be recovered by distillation. When the products are non-volatile
extraction in supercritical CO2 can be a choice. However, sometimes the
recovery of the products from the solvent solution is very difficult. In
such cases membrane separation can be an alternative. Nanofiltration is
particularly suitable for solutions with charged components like IL
solutions.
7.
Electrosynthesis of carbon nanotubes from ionic melts (Natalia
Borisenko, TU Clausthal, Institute of Metallurgy)
A lecture from the new PhD student of Prof. Frank Endres in
Clausthal.
8.
Electrochemical nanotechnology in ionic liquids (S. Zein El
Abedin, TU Clausthal, Institute of Metallurgy)
One more lecture for applications of ILs in electrochemistry given by a
postdoc researcher from Prof. Frank Endres group.
BASIC RESEARCH
1.
Photochemical and structural investigations (Charles Gordon,
RWTH-Aachen, Technical Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry).
One of the most respected researchers in ILs even though very young. He
was awarded his PhD from QUILL (Queen’s University Ionic Liquid
Laboratory) in Belfast. He has later worked in Scotland (University of
Strathclyde) and recently he moved to Aachen.
2.
Hydroformulation in Ionic Liquids (Peter Wasserscheid, RWTH
Aachen, Technical Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry)
One of the leading persons in IL research in Germany. He just became
professor in RWTH Aachen even though young enough. He received his PhD on
ILs in the middle 90’s in Germany and he is in close cooperation with the
research groups in Ireland (QUILL), Scotland and Canada (CYTEC Inc.). In
1999 he founded ’Solvent Innovation’ a private company offering a wide
range of ILs and developing new ones. They also assist customers in the
development of new technical applications for ILs.
3.
Aromatics Functionalization with Ionic Liquids (Nicole Brausch,
RWTH Aachen, Technical Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry)
A lecture for chemists only!
4. I
nvestigations on the stability and aggregate formation of an ionic
liquid (Sandra Dorbritz, University of Rostock, Technical
Chemistry)
A lecture on stability and decomposition issues of ILs from the
environmental point of view.
INDUSTRIAL CONTRIBUTIONS
1.
Urs Welz-Biermann from Merck KgaA gave a very interesting
presentation on the c
ommercial availability of ILs. Merck KgaA is
active both in terms of research and small-scale production. At the
moment the market is very small and the prices are very high (ca 1000€
for 2-3 lt). Merck sells only few kgs of the most well known ILs and few
grams for research purposes for new ILs. However, he believes that the in
the future the market will increase dramatically especially for ILs
specially designed for specific applications (task-oriented ILs). Then
Merck KgaA can go to a production level of 20-25 kilos. However, they
will not move to industrial large scale production but concentrate on
development and patenting of ILs. Maybe BASF will be the large scale
producer of ILs. Merck developed a web-site
(
www.ionicliquids-merck.de)
which they hope will serve as a discussion forum for the IL
community!
LINKS
A few useful links for those interested in ILs
www.ionicliquids-merck.de
www.solvent-innovation.com
http://quill.qub.ac.uk/
---------------------------------------------
Stathis Skouras
PhD. Student
Department of Chemical Engineering
Faculty of Chemistry and Biology
NTNU
7491, Trondheim
Norway
Office: K4-220
Telephone: + (47) 73 59 57 28 (Office)
+ (47) 93 08
22 06 (Mobil)
Fax: + (47) 73 59 40 80
e-mail: skouras@chemeng.ntnu.no
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Received on Tue Oct 28 16:53:20 2003