Not always as black as Coca Cola: Ionic liquids are bright solutions to many kinds of industrial problems

I&EC 199

Matthias Maase, matthias.maase@basf-ag.de, Global New Business Development - Intermediates, BASF Aktiengesellschaft, CZ/BC - E 100, Ludwigshafen, 67056, Germany and Calvin J Emanuel, emanuec@basf.com, Chemical Intermediates, BASF Corporation, 100 Campus Drive, Florham Park, NJ 07932.
Ionic Liquids have gained significant interest over the past years. They are unique new materials that offer novel solutions to the chemical industry as well as to it's customers. Being developed by the chemical scientific community as well as by the chemical industry the first published applications have naturally been related to chemical processes. BASF is the first company that dedicatedly used them on the large scale to improve a chemical process. The so-called BASIL™ technology has proven to be applicable to a whole variety of chemical transformations and is now offered as a system solution to customers. However, BASF is strongly convinced that ionic liquids can offer a similar or even greater potential outside the classical chemical applications. Ionic Liquids can offer solutions for various kinds of industries such as machinery, automotive, energy, textile, paper, electronics etc. It is BASFs aim to foster a broader use of these new innovative materials in industrial applications. The lecture will summarize large-scale commercial ionic liquid applications that have been reported up to now. It will also show examples for an “outside chemistry” way of using these materials and additionally answer a set of “most frequently asked questions” concerning an industrial use of ionic liquids. This will comprise issues like purity, color, stability, toxicity, recycling, disposal, price.