Grafting of cellulose acetate with ionic liquids for biofuel purification by a membrane process: Influence of the cation

• Cellulose acetate was grafted with ionic liquids in two steps.
• The corresponding membranes were used for ETBE biofuel purification.
• The grafting strategy avoided ionic liquid extraction during membrane separation.
• The membrane properties were analyzed in terms of structure-property relationships.
• The ammonium ionic liquid led to the best membrane properties.

A new strategy was developed for grafting ionic liquids (ILs) onto cellulose acetate in order to avoid IL extraction and improve its performance for ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) biofuel purification by the pervaporation membrane process. This work extended the scope of IL-containing membranes to the challenging separation of organic liquid mixtures, in which these ILs were soluble. The ILs contained the same bromide anion and different cations with increasing polar feature. The membrane properties were strongly improved by IL grafting. Their analysis in terms of structure-property relationships revealed the influence of the IL content, chemical structure and chemical physical parameters α, β, π* in the Kamlet–Taft polarity scale. The ammonium IL led to the best normalized flux of 0.182 kg/m2 h for a reference thickness of 5 μm, a permeate ethanol content of 100% and an outstanding infinite separation factor for the azeotropic mixture EtOH/ETBE at 50 °C.