Effect of the Structure of Cations and Anions of Ionic Liquids on Separation of Aromatics from Hydrocarbon Mixtures

1. Introduction Benzene is a key chemical in the chemical industry, used as the raw material for producing polymer precursors, solvents, dyes, drugs, herbicides, and so on. The world production of benzene is more than 2.0×107 tons/year (Vervalin, 1991; Weissermel and Arpe, 1993; Villaluenga and Tabe-Mohammadi, 2000). Before World War II, benzene was mainly produced from coal, but nowadays more than 90% is obtained from petroleum, mainly from catalytic reformates and FCC gasoline, and by …

Effect of the Structure of Cations and Anions of Ionic Liquids on Separation of Aromatics from Hydrocarbon Mixtures

The effects of the structure of typical cations and anions of ionic liquids on the separation of benzene and toluene from aromatic/paraffin mixtures were studied. The results showed that the corresponding separation factors were considerably larger than those of the traditional solvents (Benzene+Hexane+sulfolane), and that the ionic liquids could be used as novel solvents for the separation of aromatics from hydrocarbon mixtures. The key parameters governing the ability of ionic liquids for separating aromatics from hydrocarbon sources were investigated. It was found that the effectiveness of the ionic liquids, based on the same anion, changed in the cation order of BIqu]+< BPy]+< BMIM]+. The selectivity of the ionic liquid toward aromatics decreased apparently with the increasing length of the substituted alkyl chain of its cationic head ring. The separation factors, based on the same cation, changed in the anion order of Tf2N]-