An Ionic Liquid-Based Biorefinery Approach for Duckweed Utilization.

This study establishes a foundation for the ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment of duckweed biomass. An optimized IL-based process was designed to exploit the unique properties of duckweed including efficient metal removal, potential starch accumulation, and protein accumulation. Two ILs, namely, dimethylethanolammonium formate ([DMEtA][HCOO]) and -dimethylbutylammonium hydrogen sulfate ([DMBA][HSO]), were investigated for the pretreatment of two duckweed species ( and ).

Exploiting Cation Structure and Water Content in Modulating the Acidity of Ammonium Hydrogen Sulfate Protic Ionic Liquids.

In this paper, we investigated the effect of cation structure and water content on proton dissociation in alkylammonium [HSO] protic ionic liquids (ILs) doped with 20 wt % water and correlated this with experimental Hammett acidities. For pure systems, increased cation substitution resulted in a reduction in the number of direct anion-anion neighbors leading to larger numbers of small aggregates, which is further enhanced with addition of water. We also observed spontaneous proton dissociation from [HSO] to water only for primary amine-based protic ILs, preceded by the formation of an anion trimer motif.