Gas–liquid chromatography measurements of activity coefficients at infinite dilution of various organic solutes and water in tri-iso-butylmethylphosphonium tosylate ionic liquid

Activity coefficients at infinite dilution (γ13∞) of 33 different solutes (including alkanes, cycloalkanes, alkenes, alkynes, benzene, alkylbenzenes, water, alcohols, MTBE, thiophene and THF) in the ionic liquid tri-iso-butylmethylphosphonium tosylate have been determined by using the GLC method and have been reported over the temperature range (298.15 to 368.15) K. The partial molar excess enthalpies of mixing at infinite dilution have been determined based on temperature dependence of γ13∞. Selectivity and capacity at infinite dilution has been also calculated for exemplary separation processes in systems n-hexane/benzene and n-hexane/thiophene, to evaluate if the studied ionic liquid is capable to be a good entrainer for these processes, e.g. in the liquid–liquid extraction. The obtained results are promising however the ionic liquid studied shows a lower selectivity than some of imidazolium-based ionic liquids. To our best knowledge, the results indicate that tri-iso-butylmethylphosphonium tosylate is the best for the separation problem of aliphatic hydrocarbons from aromatic hydrocarbons among all of the studied quaternary phosphonium-based ionic liquids.