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Environment

IUPAC Project Aims To Plug Ionic Liquids Data Gap

by Patricia L. Short
April 24, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 17

COVER STORY

IUPAC Project Aims To Plug Ionic Liquids Data Gap

Information

For researchers in the nascent ionic liquids industry, there's a gap between the information they have and the information they need. That gap, notes Adam Walker, chief scientific officer of Bioniqs, is especially acute for newer product generations. The work on imidazolium ionic liquids has, Walker says, "been exceedingly valuable, but it is not what we need. So we are in partnerships with universities to do the analytical work on the ionic liquids we have, and we are doing analysis, too, to fill the gaps."

Help with such analysis may come from the ILTHERMO project, begun in 2003 by the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to develop an ionic liquids database. The project's aim is to create an open-access, free, and comprehensive database for storage and retrieval of metadata and numerical data for ionic liquids, including their syntheses, structures, properties, and uses.

The database is expected to include information on synthesis; structure; thermodynamic, thermochemical, and transport properties; solvent properties and reactions; and catalytic properties.

With potentially more than 1 million simple ionic liquids—fewer than 1,000 of which have been reported so far—the need for a living, continuously updated database is paramount, IUPAC said when the project was launched.

An external launch of ILTHERMO was originally planned for December 2005, but that date has been pushed back. According to task group head Kenneth R. Seddon, chair of inorganic chemistry in the School of Chemistry at Queen's University of Belfast, there were internal hitches at the U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology, whose computers will host the database.

Now, Seddon says, ILTHERMO will be launched at Thermo International 2006, a thermophysical properties conference. Organized by NIST and others, the conference will be held July 30-Aug. 4 at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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