Natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) may be considered ‘designer solvents’ due to their numerous structural variations and the possibility of tailoring their physicochemical properties. Prior to their industrial application, characterization of NADES is essential, including determination of their physicochemical properties, cytotoxicity, and antioxidative activity. The most important physicochemical properties of eight prepared NADES (choline chloride:malic acid, proline:malic acid, choline chloride:proline:malic acid, betaine:malic acid, malic acid:glucose, malic acid:glucose:glycerol, choline chloride:citric acid, and betaine:citric acid) were measured as functions of temperature and water content. In general, the structure of prepared NADES greatly influences their physical properties, which could be successfully modified and adjusted by addition of water. All tested NADES were absolutely benign and noncorrosive for investigated steel X6CrNiTi18-10. Furthermore, cytotoxicity of prepared solvents was assessed toward three human cell lines (HEK-293T, HeLa, and MCF-7 cells), and antioxidative activity was measured by the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) method. With regard to cell viability, all tested NADES containing carboxylic acid could be classified as practically harmless and considered environmentally safe. The ORAC values indicated that the tested NADES displayed antioxidative activity.
Liquid‐liquid extraction is an alternative method that can be used for desulfurization and denitrification of gasoline and diesel fuels. Recent approaches employ different ionic liquids as selective solvents, due to their general immiscibility with gasoline and diesel, negligible vapor pressure, and high selectivity to sulfur‐ and nitrogen‐containing compounds. For that reason, five imidazolium‐based ionic liquids and one pyridinium‐based ionic liquid were selected for extraction of thiophene, dibenzothiophene, and pyridine from two model solutions. The influences of hydrodynamic conditions, mass ratio, and number of stages were investigated. Increasing the mass ratio of ionic liquid/model fuel and multistage extraction promotes the desulfurization and denitrification abilities of the examined ionic liquids. All selected ionic liquids can be reused and regenerated by means of vacuum evaporation.