Population growth has created an expanding gap between the supply and demand of both energy and chemicals. Nonrenewable fossil sources, such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum, are the source of nearly 86% of the world’s energy and 96% of its organic chemicals. Diminishing reserves of these sources, rising atmospheric CO2 levels, and socioeconomic concerns require a reduction of our dependence...

The separation of aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes) from C4 to C10 aliphatic hydrocarbon mixtures is challenging since these hydrocarbons have boiling points in a close range and several combinations form azeotropes. In this work, we investigated the separation of toluene from heptane by extraction with ionic liquids. Several ionic liquids are suitable for extr...