Key features of the deep eutectic solvent-microwave assisted simultaneous extraction of polyphenols and delignification pretreatment of chestnut shell waste are presented.

Brønsted acidic ionic liquids (ILs) have been synthesized and investigated as catalysts in esterification and transesterification reactions: simple and non-corrosive salts characterized by aliphatic cations associated with an “acidic” anion (in particular, [HSO₄]⁻) gave the higher yields. A quite good correlation between IL acidity (H₀) and catalytic ability was found although also the hydrophilic nature of the ionic medium probably affects the process efficiency.

Dicationic ionic liquids (DILs), a subset of the ionic liquid (IL) family, have attracted growing interest in recent years, and the range of applications within which they are investigated is constantly expanding. However, data which allows structure to property correlation of a DIL is still limited, and thus selecting an appropriate salt to address a specific challenge can be problematic. In comparison to traditional ILs, DILs physico-chemical properties can be tuned by changing the length and type of spacer which connects the cationic heads as well as the type of cation. This in turn could give rise to symmetrical or asymmetrical DILs. In this work, a systematic study of a homogeneous class of 12 dibromide DILs and 12 di-carboxylate salts has been performed. The latter class of DILs were also compared to mono cation derivatives. The different traditional exchange methods to prepare carboxylate DILs have been evaluated and an insight into the drawbacks encountered is also presented. Prepared DILs were characterized (NMR, TGA, DSC) allowing the influence of the structure on their thermal stability to be understood. Most DILs were obtained as solid salts after careful drying. For some of these compounds, a new possible application was studied, namely their use as hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA) of deep eutectic mixtures, showing again some significant structural related effects.