Low-melting mixtures based on choline ionic liquids

In this article a strategy is proposed for the design of low toxic, room temperature liquid low-melting mixtures (LMMs) which are entirely composed of natural materials. From literature it is well known that, in general, deep eutectic solvents based on choline chloride and dicarboxylic acids are LMMs, but not liquids at room temperature, with one exception: a 1 : 1 molar mixture of malonic acid and choline chloride. Therefore, the starting point of this study was the decrease of the melting point of one of the components, namely the dicarboxylic acid, which is succinic, glutaric or adipic acid. For this purpose, one of the two protons of the acidic group was exchanged by a bulky unsymmetrical choline cation. The resulting ionic liquids (ILs) were still solid at room temperature, but have a reduced melting temperature compared to the corresponding acids. In the second step, mixtures of these ILs with choline chloride were prepared. It turned out that choline glutarate–choline chloride mixtures are liquids at room temperature at compositions containing 95–98 wt% of choline glutarate. Finally, urea was added as another hydrogen bond donor. Density, conductivity and viscosity measurements were performed for all obtained mixtures. Moreover, a Walden plot was drawn which indicates that all mixtures are liquids with fully dissociated ions moving independently. Therefore, they are considered as “good” ionic liquids and, thus, for example they can be used to exchange more toxic or less biodegradable ILs in application processes. A brief outlook containing application possibilities is given. It is demonstrated that choline dodecylsulfate is readily soluble in these mixtures, forming aggregates in the LMM at temperatures exceeding 55 °C.