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Journal articleSuleman MY, Judah HL, Bexis P, et al., 2025,
The acetate anion promotes hydrolysis of poly(ethylene terephthalate) in ionic liquid-water mixtures
, Green Chemistry, Vol: 27, Pages: 11475-11490, ISSN: 1463-9262A circular plastic economy reduces raw material consumption and discourages pollution. Chemical recycling upgrades the quality of recyclate and is a complementary approach to thermomechanical recycling of plastic waste. This study investigated the use of aprotic and protic ionic liquids (ILs) as solvents for chemical recycling by the hydrolysis of the most common polyester plastic, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). Combinations of three types of cations (aprotic 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium, protic 1-methylimidazolium and protic 1,5-biazocyclo-[4.3.0]non-5-enium) combined with a range of anions (acetate, chloride, methanesulfonate, hydrogen sulfate, methyl sulfate, trifluoromethanesulfonate and chlorozincate) were used to hydrolyse PET in the presence of 15 wt% water as the co-solvent and reagent. PET conversion under the screening conditions (180 °C, 3 h, 5% PET loading) varied between 1 and 100%, with ILs containing the acetate anion enabling >97% PET conversion irrespective of the cation. Acidification with aqueous HCl recovered crude crystallised terephthalic acid (TPA). Significant crude yields (46–93%) were only observed for the acetate ILs. The purity of the crude TPA was 34–98%, with 1-ethy-3-methylimidazolium acetate, [C2C1im][OAc], and 1-methylimidazolium acetate, [C1Him][OAc], yielding more and purer TPA than 1,5-biazocyclo-[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate, [DBNH][OAc]. TPA solubility, PET conversion and TPA yield generally correlated well with increasing pKa and higher hydrogen bond acceptor strength of the IL anion, suggesting that the depolymerisation mechanism in the acetate IL water mixtures is base catalysed. The screening identifies aqueous mixtures of the (pseudo)-protic IL [C1Him][OAc] as promising catalytic solvent component for the chemical recycling of PET at an industrially feasible temperature, due to high isolated TPA yields and purity achieved at a low solvent cost ($1.74–2.15 per kg). However, an effective separation a
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Journal articlePolesca C, Sobreiro-Almeida R, Passos H, et al., 2025,
Engineered from Waste: Ionic Liquid Processing of Keratin for 3D Printing Biomedical Scaffolds
, ACS MATERIALS LETTERS -
Journal articleNakasu PYS, Martinez MA, Melanie S, et al., 2025,
Chitosan-Based Biocomposite Hydrogels with Squid Pen Protein for Anionic Dyes Adsorption (vol 7, pg 1012, 2025)
, ACS MATERIALS LETTERS -
Journal articleAljohani M, Lan L, Daly H, et al., 2025,
Enhancing Hydrogen Production from Bioenergy Crops via Photoreforming
, JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, Vol: 147, Pages: 29679-29686, ISSN: 0002-7863 -
Conference paperNisar S, Seidner S, Brandt-Talbot A, et al., 2025,
Sparse regression approach to modelling the effect of ionic liquid acidity in biomass fractionation
, 14th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, including Biosystems DYCOPS 2025:, Publisher: Elsevier BV, Pages: 73-78, ISSN: 2405-8963Fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass is a crucial step to provide cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose for further processing. This paper is concerned with modelling biomass fractionation using the ionoSolv process, which employs low-cost ionic liquid water mixtures, with a special focus on describing the effect of acid:base ratio of the mixture on process performance. We build on an existing semi-mechanistic modelling framework describing the solvent extraction of three main biopolymers from woody biomass for varying fractionation temperature, time, and solids loading. Since the effect of acidity is poorly understood from a mechanistic standpoint, we use sparse regression with lasso regularisation to incorporate it in the semi-mechanistic model. We investigate both polynomial and exponential functional forms and find that the latter yields more physically-consistent results. This enabled us to recalibrate the parameters of the combined semi-mechanistic and sparse data-driven models simultaneously to accurately predict the effect of varying acid:base ratio. This hybrid modelling framework opens new opportunities for further analysis and optimisation of ionic liquid-based biomass fractionation processes.
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Journal articleShmool TA, Martin LK, Jirkas A, et al., 2025,
Design principles for engineering ionic liquid-gold nanoparticles for therapeutic delivery to the brain
, ACS Nano, Vol: 19, Pages: 24806-24816, ISSN: 1936-0851Ionic liquid (IL) nanotechnology holds significant promise for designing nanoscale materials with tunable viscosity, polarity, and thermal stability for advanced therapeutic applications. However, the field currently lacks comprehensive guidelines for integrating ILs into complex therapeutic formulations. Herein, we propose the key design considerations for engineering immunoglobulin G (IgG) conjugated to gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in the presence of choline-based ILs. By judicious IL cation and anion selection, we fine-tune the supramolecular assemblies and leverage the unique physicochemical properties of ILs to impart AuNPs with advantageous characteristics including enhanced structural, thermal, and thermodynamic stabilities, highly tunable morphologies, and markedly reduced aggregation propensities. Through systematic circular dichroism measurements, the thermodynamic parameters of the complex formulations were determined, offering insight into the IgG conformational changes and design parameters for systems of enhanced IgG conjugation to AuNP surfaces. In demonstrating the power of our design approach, the complex formulation of IgG-choline chloride-AuNPs, also including trehalose, histidine, and arginine, was delivered via focused ultrasound and microbubbles across the blood–brain barrier and showed a 7.6-fold increase in delivery in vivo compared to the traditional formulation. We demonstrate that IgG-IL-AuNPs can be easily and precisely manipulated at the nanometer scale, enabling the formation of versatile structural configurations. Holistically, we believe the rational design approach developed will advance the engineering of tailored IL-nanocarriers for targeted therapeutic delivery and broaden the scope of IL applications in biomedicine.
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Journal articleDezashibi AHM, Hallett JP, Fennell PS, 2025,
Design and operation of a cost-effective reactor for large protic ionic liquid synthesis
, CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND PROCESSING-PROCESS INTENSIFICATION, Vol: 213, ISSN: 0255-2701 -
Journal articleIderis MS, Isa MHM, Mahat MM, et al., 2025,
Comparative analysis of sulfuric acid and free cellulase hydrolysis for waste-paper-to-glucose conversion: experimental and techno-economic evaluation
, ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE, Vol: 12, ISSN: 2054-5703 -
Journal articleMalaret F, Nakasu PYS, Verdia Barbara P, et al., 2025,
Relationship Between Density and Structure of Lignins Obtained from Different Feedstocks Pretreated with Protic Ionic Liquids
, PROCESSES, Vol: 13- Cite
- Citations: 1
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Journal articleVerdia Barbara P, Choudhary H, Nakasu PS, et al., 2025,
Recent Advances in the Use of Ionic Liquids and Deep Eutectic Solvents for Lignocellulosic Biorefineries and Biobased Chemical and Material Production
, CHEMICAL REVIEWS, Vol: 125, Pages: 5461-5583, ISSN: 0009-2665- Cite
- Citations: 7
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