This review provides a judicious assessment of the CO₂ separation efficiency of membranes using ionic liquid-based materials and highlights breakthroughs and key challenges in this field.

Ionic-liquid-based aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) have been the focus of a significant amount of research in the last decade. However, only (moderately) toxic and poorly biodegradable ionic liquids have been explored hitherto. Focusing on the development of more benign and sustainable approaches, a novel class of ABS using cholinium-based ionic liquids is proposed. For the first time, it is shown that a large assortment of cholinium-based ionic liquids is capable of undergoing liquid–liquid demixing in the presence of aqueous solutions with strong salting-out species. In order to assess the applicability of these systems for separation purposes, the partitioning of two antibiotics and/or their hydrochloride forms was also investigated. Cholinium-based ABS are shown to be improved routes for the extraction of pharmaceuticals, achieving complete extractions in a single-step by way of the proper tailoring of the phase forming components and their concentrations in the aqueous media.

The preparation and characterization of biocomposite materials with improved properties based on poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and bacterial cellulose, and, for comparative purposes, vegetal cellulose fibers, both in their pristine form or after acetylation, is reported. The composite materials were obtained through the simple and green mechanical compounding of a PLA matrix and bacterial cellulose nanofibrils (or vegetable fibers), and were characterized by TGA, DSC, tensile assays, DMA, SEM and water uptake. The bionanocomposites obtained from PLA and acetylated bacterial cellulose were particularly interesting, given the considerable improvement in thermal and mechanical properties, as evidenced by the significant increase in both elastic and Young moduli, and in the tensile strength (increments of about 100, 40 and 25%, respectively) at very low nanofiller loadings (up to 6%). These nanocomposites also showed low hygroscopicity and considerable transparency, features reported here for the first time.

Herein, seven anions including four imide-based, namely bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide (TFSI), bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (FSI), bis[(pentafluoroethyl)sulfonyl]imide (BETI), 2,2,2-trifluoromethylsulfonyl-N-cyanoamide (TFSAM) and 2,2,2-trifluoro-N-(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) acetamide (TSAC), and two sulfonate anions, trifluoromethanesulfonate (triflate, TF) and nonafluorobutanesulfonate (NF), are considered and compared. The volumetric mass density and dynamic viscosity of five ionic liquids containing these anions combined with the commonly used 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium cation (C₂C₁im), [C₂C₁im][FSI], [C₂C₁im][BETI], [C₂C₁im][TFSAM], [C₂C₁im][TSAC] and [C₂C₁im][NF] are measured in the temperature range of 293.15 ≤ T/K ≤ 353.15 and at atmospheric pressure. The results show that [C₂mim][FSI] and [C₂mim][TFSAM] exhibit the lowest densities and viscosities among all the studied ionic liquids. The experimental volumetric data is used to validate a more consistent re-parameterization of the CL&P force field for use in MD simulations of ionic liquids containing the ubiquitous bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide and trifluoromethanesulfonate anions and to extend the application of the model to other molten salts with similar ions.