Rev Chem Eng 2017; aop

Tayeb Aissaoui*, Inas M. AlNashef, Umair A. Qureshi and Yacine Benguerba

Potential applications of deep eutectic solvents in

natural gas sweetening for CO2 capture
DOI 10.1515/revce-2016-0013 to develop their properties and decrease their economic
Received February 29, 2016; accepted October 18, 2016 cost. Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are among the poten-
tial green solvents that may have a bright future in NG
Abstract: Novel solvents named deep eutectic solvents
industry.
(DESs) have been intensively investigated in recent years.
The increase of CO2 concentration as a result of
Their non-toxicity, biodegradability, low volatility, easy
human activities is believed to be one of the main factors
preparation and low cost make them promising green
that cause global warming (Yancheshmeh et al. 2016). Due
solvents for several industrial processes. This article pro-
to its potential adverse effects on environmental, social
vides a status review of the possible applications of DESs
and economic impacts of global warming the efforts to
in natural gas (NG) sweetening by carbon dioxide (CO2)
reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions have been
capturing. Investigations on preparation and chemical
increased (Borhani et al. 2015). It was reported in May 2015
structures of DESs were reported. In addition, very recent
that the atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 403 ppm;
physiochemical properties and applications of DESs were
this represents an unacceptable increase compared to
well discussed. Mainly, experimental and predicted solu-
the values estimated about 200 years ago (Yancheshmeh
bilities of CO2 in DESs were reported and compared in
et al. 2016). According to official reports, the increase in
this work. It was deduced that DESs offer some potential
temperature must be kept in 2°C compared with the pre-
advantages over the conventional solvents, i.e. alkanol­
industrial level to minimize the effect on climate change,
amines, in terms of absorption efficiency, easy prepara-
and the CO2 emission should be reduced globally by sig-
tion and low economic cost. It is expected that in coming
nificant figures (Song et al. 2016).
decades, DESs will offer potential use in NG technology.
There are four potential sources for CO2 emission: (1)
Further investigations are highly required to highlight
industry, (2) power plants utilizing fossil fuels, (3) hydro-
more about these neoteric solvents.
gen production from feed stock rich of carbon and (4)
Keywords: CO2 capture; deep eutectic solvents; natural transportation (Sabouni et  al. 2014). Power plants utiliz-
gas sweetening; post-combustion capture; solubility. ing fossil fuels that provide more than three quarters of
the power needed for commercial purposes are consid-
ered the largest source for CO2 emissions (Sabouni et  al.

1 Introduction 2014). Consequently, many technologies have been used

Capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from natural gas (NG)
sweetening unit has been considered as the most mature
technology in the past few decades. Several studies in the
literature addressed the application of aqueous solutions
of alkanolamines in the absorption process. However,
the used absorbents are under intensive investigations
*Corresponding author: Tayeb Aissaoui, Department of Chemical
Engineering, Université Ferhat Abbas, Sétif-1, 19000 Sétif, Algeria,
e-mail: t.aissaoui84@gmail.com
Inas M. AlNashef: Department of Chemical and Environmental
Engineering, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology,
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Umair A. Qureshi: Department of Chemistry, Government Boys
Degree College Qasimabad, Hyderabad 71000, Pakistan
Yacine Benguerba: Laboratoire de Génie des Procédés Chimiques,
Université Ferhat Abbas, Sétif-1, 19000 Sétif, Algeria
for capturing CO2 from power plants using fossil fuel.
Physical and chemical absorption, adsorption, cryo-
genic and membrane processes are among the most used
processes (Mondal et  al. 2012). However, the absorption
process is considered as the most promising technology
(Yang et  al. 2008, Dinca et  al. 2015). This method offers
some potential advantages over adsorption, cryogenic
and membrane processes in terms of economic cost and
CO2 capture efficiency (Yang et  al. 2008, Mondal et  al.
2012). Up to now, alkanolamines are mainly the imple-
mented solvents for CO2 capture in NG industry (Brakstad
et  al. 2012, Yu and Tan 2014, Chremos et  al. 2016, Dinca
2016). However, alkanolamines have some industrial
disadvantages that make them in need of improvement.
Alkanolamines suffer from toxicity, low thermal stabil-
ity, thermal degradation, high volatility and many other
drawbacks (Barzagli et al. 2013, Kim et al. 2013, Shojaeian
and Haghtalab 2013, Hizaddin et al. 2015, Lv et al. 2015b).

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2      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
Developing the existing absorbents or inventing novel
solvents that possess better properties than conventional
alkanolamines is highly demanded.
As further contribution to green solvents, DESs were
introduced in several science and technology applications
(Dai et al. 2013). DESs were used as alternative for both ionic
liquids (ILs) and conventional solvents in many applications
(Hayyan et  al. 2015). They exhibit similar physicochemical
properties to ILs in addition to some potential advantages
over ILs such as easy syntheses, much lower cost, low toxic-
ity and high biodegradability (Gu et al. 2015, Hayyan et al.
2015). It should be noted that these advantages are a result
of the right selection of the compounds that form DESs.
Because of their highly attractive properties, DESs have
gained attention in many industrial applications such as bio-
catalysis, pharmaceuticals, extraction or reaction media at
room temperature, CO2 absorption (Wu et al. 2012, Dai et al.
2013), the electrochemical deposition of different metals, e.g.
Zn, Cr, Sn, Cu and Ag (Kareem et al. 2010), and for the separa-
tion of aromatics from using liquid-liquid extraction (Hayyan
et al. 2013c). In addition, DESs were used for the production
and purification of biodiesel (Wu et al. 2012, Dai et al. 2013).
In a recent publication, García et al. (2015a) reported a
summary of the main physicochemical properties of DESs
and their application for gas absorption processes. The
authors discussed in detail different processes of carbon
capture (García et  al. 2015a). This article provides a status
review of the application of DESs in CO2 capture focusing on
the solubility of CO2 in DESs for both theoretical and experi-
mental investigations in addition to the recent properties and
applications of DESs. To the best of our knowledge, this is
the first article reviewing the literature on the application of
DESs in NG sweetening in particular. The review article also
included the description of the conventional alkanolamine
as used in NG sweetening. From 2003 to now, many arti-
cles on the subject of DESs have been published, including
general reviews on contributions of DESs in nanotechnol-
ogy, enhanced oil recovery, electrodeposition, purification
of biodiesel, drug solubilization, electrolytes and DESs as co-
solvents for enzyme-catalyzed hydrolysis. All works discussed
in this review aim to show the possibility and benefits of
replacing alkanolamines by DESs in the CO2 capture process.
2 Deep eutectic solvents
2.1 Introduction
Based on green chemistry and engineering general princi-
ples, DESs can be considered as green alternatives to ILs
and conventional solvents, because of their advantageous
properties such as negligible vapor pressure, large liquid
range, high thermal stability, more solvation capacity,
biodegradability and non-flammability (Zhang et al. 2012,
Azizi et al. 2014, Hayyan et al. 2015). In addition, the com-
ponents of the DESs can be chosen wisely to reduce the
cost of the DES (Hayyan et al. 2013a–e, 2014).
A DES can be prepared by mixing two or three compo-
nents which are capable of forming hydrogen bond inter-
actions or weak complexes, to form a eutectic mixture
(Zhang et  al. 2012). Due to the interactions between the
components, the freezing point of DESs decreases dramat-
ically and by convention it should be lower than or equal
to 100°C (Zhang et al. 2012). Abbot et al. reported the prep-
aration of the first DES that was a mixture of choline chlo-
ride (ChCl) as hydrogen bond acceptor (HBA) and urea
as hydrogen bond donor (HBD). The melting point of the
resulting DES for a 1 : 2 molar ratio was about 12°C (Abbott
et al. 2003).
One of the main differences between DESs and ILs is
that ILs are totally composed of ions, while DESs contain
both ionic and neutral species. Another difference is that
ILs are formed by chemical reactions and the produced ILs
need different purification steps. On the other hand, DESs
are formed by mixing and heating a mixture of selected
compounds with specific molar ratios. Forming hydro-
gen bonds among the components of the DES results in
an eutectic combination with a much lower freezing point
than the individual components (Singh et al. 2013). DESs
and ILs have similar physicochemical properties; however,
DESs differ from ILs mainly because (a) DESs contain both
ionic and neutral species and (b) they can be prepared
from non-ionic species in some cases (Mukesh et al. 2014).
In recent years, research groups have reported many
potential applications of DESs (Zhang et al. 2012, Dai et al.
2013, Xiong et al. 2015). For example, Gu et al. (2015) inves-
tigated the application of the novel DES ChCl : glycerol (GL)
in the transesterification of rapeseed oil to biodiesel as co-
solvent. In another work, Xiong et al. (2015) employed a
ChCl : urea mixture-based DES system for the synthesis
of hematite nanospindles. DESs were also used as a reac-
tion medium in several applications. For example, Wang
et al. (2015) conducted a reaction of halogenation of boron
dipyrromethene in the presence of N-halosuccinimide
using ChCl : 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol as a ­reaction
medium. ChCl-based DESs were also implemented as
functional additives for starch-based plastics (Leroy et al.
2012). The efficiency of DESs in CO2 capture technology
was also investigated. Recently, García et  al. (2015a–d)
reported a theoretical study on mitigation of CO2 by using
selective DESs. The group used the density functional
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theory (DFT) simulations to investigate CO2 capture at
the molecular level (García et al. 2015a–d). Furthermore,
many other experimental and theoretical investigations
took place in the application of DESs in CO2 capture (Ali
et al. 2014, Li et al. 2014, Lu et al. 2015a,b).
Due to their promising industrial applications, phys-
icochemical properties of DESs were investigated by
several research groups around the globe (Zhang et  al.
2012, Hayyan et al. 2015). Recently, Kow and Sirat (2015)
have reported the physical properties of manganese(II)-
based DESs. Moreover, Hayyan et al. (2015) reported the
physical properties of triethylene glycol (TEG)-based
DESs synthesized by the combination of TEG with five
ammonium and phosphonium salts. Previously, Hayyan
et  al. (2013a–e), Shahbaz et  al. (2011a,b, 2012a,b), Luo
et al. (2012) and Kareem et al. (2010) measured the physi-
cal properties of phosphonium- and ammonium-based
DESs. In addition, García et  al. (2015a–d) reported the
nanoscopic and macroscopic physicochemical properties
of ChCl : levulinic acid. Rengstl et  al. (2014) studied the
thermal stability of the choline-based DESs. They found
that the decomposition temperatures are in the range of
269–280°C. These temperatures are higher than those of
ILs and HBDs and more than 250°C above the melting
points of the HBDs, which leads to a wide liquid range
wherein these DESs could be used in many technologi-
cal applications (Rengstl et  al. 2014). It is expected that
many other studies on the characteristics of DESs will
be carried out in the coming years, because of the envi-
ronmental friendly properties of DESs and their simple
preparation and low cost.
Additionally, investigations on ionic and eutectic sol-
vents in tissues of living organisms took place in the field
of green chemistry. Natural molecules such as organic
acids, amino acids, urea, choline and sugars have been
used to develop neoteric solvent named natural deep
eutectic solvents (NADES) (Kudłak et  al. 2015). NADES
may also occur in organisms living in difficult conditions,
especially those which must survive long droughts and
frosts (Kudłak et  al. 2015). Further efforts are devoted to
develop this novel technology.
Recently, the toxicity of DESs has been investigated by
several research groups. It was found that DESs are usually
non-toxic. Huang et  al. (2014) conducted tests on an
aquatic invertebrate – Hydra sinensis. ChCl combined with
urea was the DES tested in this work. It was reported that
the combination of ingredients into a DES proved to be less
toxic than the activity of each ingredient separately or ChCl
and urea mixed physically (Huang et al. 2014). Radošević
et  al. (2015), Wen et  al. (2015) and Hayyan et  al. (2013a–
e) reported positive results by evaluating the toxicity of
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       3
different types of DESs. To sum up, DESs have shown less
toxicity compared to conventional solvents and ILs.
According to the studies reported in this review,
DESs are becoming potential alternative for both con-
ventional solvents and ILs. Research groups devote their
energies to the discovery of more novel DESs and report
their characteristics. The combination mechanism and
chemical structure of DESs are also attracting interest of
the researchers (Wang et al. 2012b, García et al. 2015a–d).
DESs are expected to occupy significant interest in future
green chemistry and engineering investigations.
2.2 Chemical structures and preparation of
DESs
The chemical structures of DESs have a significant impact
on their properties. The investigation of nanoscopic
factors that affect DES properties establish structure-
property relationships regarding HBA : HBD intermolecu-
lar interactions (García et al. 2015a–d). At the early stage
of this research, few research papers were available in the
literature investigating the molecular interactions and
combination mechanism of the components HBAs : HBDs.
Recently, Aissaoui and AlNashef (2015) have reported
the functional groups of phosphonium- and ammonium-
based DESs (Aissaoui 2015, Aissaoui and AlNashef 2015).
In another work, Aissaoui et  al. (2016) have reported
COSMO-RS prediction for the chemical structure and com-
bination mechanism of glycols-based DESs. It was deduced
that other possible hydrogen bond interaction took place
in the formation of DESs in addition to the hydrogen bond
interactions reported by Abbott et al. (2003) and Perkins
et al. (2013). Moreover, García et al. (2015a–d) reported the
application of the effect of charge assignment methods on
ChCl : levulinic acid DESs. They developed the force field
parameterizations for molecular dynamics simulations
of the DES. Charges from electrostatic potentials along
to cluster approach should be the most adequate option
for developing force field parameterization in DESs. They
also reported a DFT study and a topological analysis of
the electronic density for DESs. The results of this study
showed that the hydrogen bond network is the most influ-
ential factor that affects the melting temperature (García
et al. 2015a–d). In another study, Zhang et al. (2014) inves-
tigated the main chemical species in DES-based ChCl and
magnesium chloride hexahydrate. They employed the DFT
method termed B3LYP to investigate the stable conforma-
tional structure of the main chemical species in the DES,
and the possibility to reliably generate IR data to compare
with experiments (Zhang et al. 2014). Figure 1 illustrates
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4      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
Figure 1: Chemical structure and combination mechanism of ChCl
urea and formed DES using COSMO-RS.
the chemical structure and charge density of ChCl, urea
and the formed DES (ChCl : urea). Clearly, an interaction
between the H atom attached with the O atom of ChCl
cation was directed to the O atom of urea. This is a new
interaction that may occur during the DES combination. It
should be noted that Abbott et al. (2003) and Perkins et al.
(2013) reported the interaction between the Cl− anion of
ChCl and the H atom of urea. These hydrogen bond inter-
actions are the main reason for the significant depression
of the freezing point of DESs (Abbott et al. 2003, Perkins
et al. 2013).
The melting point depression resulting from combin-
ing ChCl with HBD can be attributed to the formation of
hydrogen bonds between HBD molecules and Cl− and to
the delocalization of charge on the cation of HBA due
to the new hydrogen bonding in the cation (García et al.
2015a–d). In addition, cation molecular symmetry also
has an effect on melting point depression (García et  al.
2015a–d).
Abbott et  al. (2007a) initially divided DESs into
three different types using the general formula
R1R2R3R4N+X−Y−.
Type I DES Y = MClx, M = Zn, Sn, Fe, Al, Ga
Type II DES Y = MClx·yH2O, M = Cr, Co, Cu, Ni, Fe
Type III DES Y = R5Z with Z = –CONH2, –COOH, –OH
Subsequently, a fourth type of DES was reported by the
same group. This type consists of a metal chloride (e.g.
FeCl2) mixed with glycerol, ethylene glycol (EG), acet­
amide or urea (type IV DES) as HBDs (Abbott et al. 2007b,
Zhang et  al. 2012, Hayyan et  al. 2015). Schemes 1 and 2
show the chemical structures of HBDs and HBAs used for
several DES preparations.
Based on conducted experiments, DESs are easily
prepared by mixing HBD with its corresponding HBA. The
operational conditions of the combination process to form
DES depend on the types of HBDs and HBAs, especially
the temperature of the process. Moreover, the magnetic
stirrer agitator speed depends on the type of the involved
species in DES preparation. Additionally, humidity has a
profound effect on the characteristics of DESs. Therefore,
it is highly important to keep the HBDs, HBAs and pre-
pared DESs away from any moisture source. It should be
noted that the homogeneous liquid phase is the sign for
ending the process of DES preparation. Table 1 shows the
operational conditions of the process of DES preparation.
2.3 Physiochemical properties of DESs
It was found that the chemical structure of HBAs and
HBDs and their molar ratio have a significant influence on
the physical properties of the formed DESs such as freez-
ing point, viscosity and density. In addition, the water
content in DESs should be strictly controlled because of
the impact of water on the physical properties. In the fol-
lowing subsections, the main physical properties of DESs
will be discussed.
2.3.1 Freezing point
Most investigations of eutectic ILs are reported as a result
of measurement of their melting points and fewer utilized
differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to measure melting
temperature or freezing temperature (Zhao et al. 2011). It
should be noted that the precise and reliable determina-
tion of the freezing and/or melting points of DESs is made
extremely difficult because of the supercooling phenom-
enon (Zhao et  al. 2011). Hydrogen bonding between the
halide anion and the hydrogen moiety causes charge delo-
calization. Consequently, this causes a dramatic decrease
in the melting point of the resulting DES compared to that
of the individual components (Carriazo et  al. 2012). By
convention, DESs are defined as solvents with a melting
point below or equal to 100°C (Maugeri and Dominguez
de Maria 2012, Ru and Konig 2012). Hydrogen bonding
and complex interaction between the halide anion of the
HBA and HBD are more energetically favored relative to
the lattice energies of the pure constituents (Hayyan et al.
2010, 2015). It was found that compounds possessing
lower melting points can form ILs more easily than others
(Kow and Sirat 2015). Recently, Kow and Sirat (2015) have
reported the freezing point of manganese (II)-based DESs.
Their results indicated that MnCl2·4H2O : acetamide with
Tf = 27.5°C is a potential candidate for industrial applica-
tions (Kow and Sirat 2015). In contrast, MnCl2·4H2O : GL
with Tf = 34.5°C and high viscosity could not be a good
solvent for industrial applications (Kow and Sirat 2015).
Moreover, Hayyan et  al. (2015) measured the freezing
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 T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       5

Hydrogen bond donors

O OH O OH OH
HO O HO OH HO HO
Triethylene glycol Diethylene glycol Ethylene glycol 1, 4-butanediol

OH O O
F CH3
H2N
OH HO
H2N
H3C H2N NH2 H2N NH NH F
O
Glycerol CH3 F
Phenol Urea 1-methylurea 1-(trifluoromethyl) urea Acetamide

O O O
O
F NH2 N OH OH OH
NH
F HO
HO H3C
H3C CH3 N
O OH O
F H O OH
N-methylacetamide Trifluoroacetamide Imidazole Oxalic acid Lactic acid Malic acid

O
O O O O O
O
OH
OH HO
HO
OH HO OH OH
O O
Phenyl acetic acid Malonic acid Glycolic acid OH Glutaric acid Italonic acid

O OH CH3
OH O H3C
H3C H3C OH
CH3 O HO
OH HO
O
Levulinic acid O OH
Phenyl propionic acid L-(+)-tartaric acid o-cresol xylenol

HO
O O
HO OH HO OH HO
OH HO H
OH
OH
HO HO
HO OH OH O H
+2H2O O O
OH HO OH HO OH
Oxalic acid dihydrate Xylitol C-sorbitol D-glucose D-iso sorbide

OH

OH OH O OH HO
O
HO OH OH
HO HO
OH OH HO OH
HO OH
Glucose Sorbitol D-fructose

Scheme 1: Typical structures of hydrogen bond donors used for DES preparation.

points of phosphonium- and ammonium-based DESs. that these DESs could replace conventional solvents in
It was found that the range of the freezing points for the many industrial application (Hayyan et al. 2015). Clearly,
studied DESs was − 19.83°C to − 16.59°C. This indicates the DESs investigated by Hayyan et al. (2015) may attract

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6      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs

Halid salts

H2C
Br– Br– Cl–
H3C
P+ P + P+

Methyl triphenylphosphonium Alyltriphenylphosphonium bromide Benzyltriphenylphosphonium

bromide chloride

CH3 CH3
CH3 NO–3 CH3
O– + H3C Cl– Cl–
H3C N H3C
+
H3C N+ N
O CH3 OH OH
H3C NH+3
CH3 OH
Choline acetate Choline nitrate Choline chloride Ethylammonuim chloride

CH3 CH3
CH3 CH3
Cl– Br–
H3C N + Cl–
NH+ H3C N+ H 3C N+
CH3 OH H3C OH F Cl
CH3 CH3

N-ethyl-2-hydroxy-N,N- N,N-diethylethanolammonium 2-fluoro-N,N,N- 2-chloro-N,N,N-

dimethylethanaminium chloride trimethylethanaminium trimethylethanamonium chloride
chloride

H3C HO
O Cl–
Cl– H3C
CH3 CH3 CH3
N+ N+ N+
H3C O N HO
CH3

2-(acetyloxy)-N,N,N-trimethylethana 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium N-benzyl-2-hydroxy-N-methylethana

minium chloride chloride minium chloride

F F
F O O F
PF–6
H3C H3C CH3
S S N+
N F N F
O O Cl–
N N+ H3C
+
CH3 Li
1-ethyl-3-butylbenzotriazolium Lithium bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide N,N,N-trimethyl(phenyl)
hexafluorophosphate methanaminium

Scheme 2: Typical structures of hydrogen bond acceptors used for DES preparation.

more industrial interest compared to the DESs reported by 2.3.2 Viscosity

Kow and Sirat (2015) due to the difference in freezing tem-
peratures. Table 2 illustrates the freezing points of several Viscosity is one of the most important physical properties
selected DESs. for solvents. It influences the rate of chemical reactions

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Table 1: Operational conditions for the preparation of different DESs at atmospheric pressure (molar ratio and temperature).
Hydrogen bond donors Hydrogen bond acceptors
Choline chloride Urea
Choline chloride TEG
Choline chloride GL
Choline chloride MgCl2·6H2O
Benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride EG
Methyltriphenyl phosphonium bromide GL
Methyltriphenyl phosphonium bromide EG
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride EG
in some cases. For example, the high rate of diffusion-
controlled chemical reactions can be decreased because
of the high viscosity of the solvent (Ru and Konig 2012).
Operational costs, for example, stirring, mixing and
pumping, can be reduced if the viscosity of the solvent
or mixture is low (Ru and Konig 2012). It was found that
the viscosity of the DES increases with increasing size or
molecular mass of the anion of the HBA (Ru and Konig
2012). Previously, viscosities of many DESs were measured
by several research groups (Abbott et  al. 2004, Boisset
et  al. 2013, Siongco et  al. 2013). In a recent publication,
Hayyan et  al. (2015) measured the viscosities of ammo-
nium- and phosphonium-based DESs. It was found that
the structure of HBD and that of HBA and the temperature
affect the viscosity of the DES. For example, N,N-dieth-
ylethanol ammonium chloride : TEG at a ratio 1 : 4  has
the lowest viscosity η = 610 mPa s (Hayyan et al. 2015) at
25°C. In contrast, methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide
(MTPB) : TEG, ratio 1 : 4, showed the highest viscosity of
136.1 mPa s at 80°C (Hayyan et al. 2015). In addition, Kow
and Sirat (2015) reported the viscosity of manganese (II)-
based DESs. Low viscosity, 112.80  mPa s, was observed
at 21°C for acetamide : MnCl2·4H2O with a ratio 1 : 7 (Kow
and Sirat 2015). The highest measured viscosity was
6689.25 mPa s at 21°C for d(−)-fructose : MnCl2·4H2O. This
very high viscosity will hamper the application of such
DESs in the industry (Kow and Sirat 2015). Viscosities of
some selected DESs are listed in Table 2.
2.3.3 Ionic conductivity
Most of DESs have low ionic conductivities (lower than
2 mS/cm at room temperature) (Hayyan et al. 2015) because
of their high viscosities. As expected, the conductivities of
DESs increase significantly with increases of temperature.
This may be attributed to the decrease in the viscosity of
the DES (Zhang et al. 2012). Many research groups found
that the conductivity of DESs follows the Arrhenius-like
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       7
Molar ratios Temperature (°C) References
1 : 2 80 Yue et al. 2012
1 : 4 80 Hayyan et al. 2015
1 : 2 <90 Ghareh Bagh et al. 2013
1 : 2 90 Zhang et al. 2014
1 : 3 70 Kareem et al. 2010
1 : 3 80 Mjalli et al. 2014
1 : 4 70 Kareem et al. 2010
1 : 3 90 Shahbaz et al. 2013
equation (Zhang et  al. 2012). Moreover, it was reported
that the HBA : HBD molar ratio s significantly impacts
the viscosities and consequently the conductivities of
DESs (Abbott et al. 2004). Some groups reported that the
increase of the concentration of the salt (HBA) increases
the conductivity of the resulting DES. For example, in the
case of ChCl as HBA, the conductivity of the DES increases
with increasing ChCl concentration (Zhang et  al. 2012).
For the ChCl : GL molar ratio of 1 : 3 the conductivity of the
DES reached 0.85  mS cm− 1 (Zhang et  al. 2012). At higher
HBA concentrations, the conductivity >1 mS cm− 1 compa-
rable to that of an IL (Zhang et al. 2012). However, García
et  al. (2015a) reported that the increase of conductivity
with increasing HBA concentration is true for some DESs
only. It was confirmed that the variation of the conductiv-
ity with the HBA concentration depends on both the type
of HBA and the HBD (García et al. 2015a–d). Table 2 shows
the conductivity of selected DESs.
2.3.4 Density
Owing to its importance as a physical property, the density
of DESs was investigated by several research groups (Leron
and Li 2012, Leron et al. 2012, Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c, 2013,
Yadav et al. 2014, Hayyan et al. 2015, Kow and Sirat 2015).
Most of DESs have densities higher than that of water (Ru
and Konig 2012). Recently, Yadav et  al. (2015) reported
the densities of two DESs, namely, ethaline (ChCl : EG)
at a 1 : 2  molar ratio and maline (ChCl : malonic acid) at
a 1 : 2 molar ratio, and their aqueous mixtures as a func-
tion of temperature. It was reported that the excess molar
volume is negative and significant. The authors attributed
this to the presence of stronger interactions between water
and ethaline or maline as compared to those among water
or among ethaline or maline molecules (Yadav et al. 2015).
In addition, Constantin et al. (2015) measured the densities
of ChCl-based ILs. It was found that the studied ILs have
good transport properties. As expected, the density and
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 Table 2: Freezing point, viscosity and conductivity of particular DESs.

Halide salt   Hydrogen bond donor   Ratio  Tf (°C)   References   η (mPa s)   References   k (mS cm− 1)   References

Allyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   Triethylene glycol   1 : 10  − 19.52  Hayyan et al. 2015   636.8 (25°C)   Hayyan et al. 2015   0.46 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
Benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride   Triethylene glycol   1 : 8  − 19.49  Hayyan et al. 2015   1094.5 (25°C)   Hayyan et al. 2015   0.21 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   Triethylene glycol   1 : 4  − 18.17  Hayyan et al. 2015   1376 (25°C)   Hayyan et al. 2015   0.49 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   Ethylene glycol   1 : 4  − 49.35  Shabaz et al. 2011   109.8 (25°C)   Kareem et al. 2010   1.557 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al.
2013
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   Glycerol   1 : 3  − 5.55   Shabaz et al. 2011   –   –  0.103 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al.
2013
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   2,2,2-Trifluoroacetamide  1 : 8  − 69.29 Kareem et al. 2010   136.15 (25°C)   Kareem et al. 2010   –  –
8      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs

N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride   Triethylene glycol   1 : 4  − 16.59 Hayyan et al. 2015   610 (25°C)   Hayyan et al. 2015   0.97 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride   Ethylene glycol   1 : 2  − 31   Shahbaz et al.   –   –  5.12 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al.
2012a–c 2013
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride   Glycerol   1 : 2  − 1.33   Shahbaz et al.   –   –  0.75 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al.
2012a–c 2013
Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate   Acetamide   1 : 7  27.5   Kow and Sirat 2015   112.80 (2°C)   Kow and Sirat 2015   0.127 (29.4°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015
Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate   Glycerol   1 : 3  34.5   Kow and Sirat 2015   1221.25 (21°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015   0.031 (29.5°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015
Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate   d(+)Glucose   1 : 1  –   –  434.30 (21°C)   Kow and Sirat 2015   0.099 (27.7°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015
Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate   d(−)Fructose   1 : 1  –   –  570.40 (21°C)   Kow and Sirat 2015   0.077 (28.9°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015
Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate   d(−)Fructose   1 : 2  –   –  6689.25 (21°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015   0.007 (28.1°C)  Kow and Sirat 2015
Tetrapropylammonium bromide   Triethylene glycol   1 : 3  − 19.2   Jibril et al. 2014   79.9 (30°C)   Jibril et al. 2014   –  –
Tetrapropylammonium bromide   Ethylene glycol   1 : 4  − 23.4   Jibril et al. 2014   58.2 (30°C)   Jibril et al. 2014   –  –
Choline chloride   Triethylene glycol   1 : 3  − 19.83  Hayyan et al. 2015   779.8 (25°C)   Hayyan et al. 2015   1.41 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
Choline chloride   Ethylene glycol   1 : 2  − 66   Shahbaz et al. 2010  35 (30°C)   D’Agostino et al. 2011  7.61 (20°C)  Abbott et al. 2007b
Choline chloride   Glycerol   1 : 2  − 40   Abbott et al. 2011b   246.79 (30°C)   Yadav et al. 2014   1.05 (20°C)  Abbott et al. 2007b
Choline chloride   Imidazole   3 : 7  56   Hou et al. 2008   15 (70°C)   Hou et al. 2008   12 (60°C)  Hou et al. 2008
Choline chloride   d-Fructose   2 : 1  10   Hayyan et al. 2012   236.10 (85°C)   Hayyan et al. 2012   –  –
Choline chloride   d-Fructose   1 : 1  20   Hayyan et al. 2012   129.30 (85°C)   Hayyan et al. 2012   –  –
Choline chloride   d-Glucose   2 : 1  15   Hayyan et al. 2013c   72.0 (85°C)   Hayyan et al. 2013c   –  –
Choline chloride   d-Glucose   1 : 1  31   Hayyan et al. 2013c   209.3 (85°C)   Hayyan et al. 2013c   –  –
Choline chloride   Phenol   1 : 3  − 20.05  García et al. 2015a   35.17 (30°C)   García et al. 2015a   –  –
Choline chloride   1,4-Butanediol   1 : 3  − 32   García et al. 2015a   140 (20°C)   Zhang et al. 2012   1.64 (20°C)  Abbott et al. 2007b
Choline chloride   o-Cresol   1 : 3  − 23.75  García et al. 2015a   77.65 (25°C)   García et al. 2015a   –  –
Choline chloride   Urea   1 : 2  12   Abbott et al. 2003   449 (30°C)   D’Agostino et al. 2011  0.199 (40°C)  Abbott et al. 2006

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viscosity decreased with decreasing temperature while
their conductivities increased with temperature (Constan-
tin et al. 2015). Previously, Ru and Konig (2012) compared
the density of DESs formed by ChCl : EG and ChCl : gGL
with [ChCl][propionate], [ChCl][tiglate], [ChCl][H-maleate]
and [ChCl][saccharinate] as ILs. It was deduced that DESs
possess lower densities compared to those of ILs (Ru and
Konig 2012). Table 3 illustrates the density and water
content of different selected DESs.
2.4 A
 pplications of DESs
In the last two decades, DESs witnessed significant expan-
sion in terms of their potential industrial applications.
When first introduced, the main applications of DESs
were in electrochemical processes. Nowadays, DESs have
proved their potential applications in many other chemi-
cal and engineering fields. Many research groups reported
several potential applications of different DESs (Lindberg
et al. 2010, Long et al. 2010, Paiva et al. 2014). The follow-
ing are the very recent proposed applications of DESs.
2.4.1 DESs in nanotechnology
In recent years, DESs were involved in advanced technolo-
gies such as nanotechnology. Abo-Hamad et al. (2015) pub-
lished an intensive review on the application of DESs in
nanotechnology. It was reported that DESs have an active
positive effect in improving the size and morphology of
nanomaterials during the synthesis stage (Abo-Hamad
et al. 2015). In addition, it was found that DESs confined in
nanosize pores or tubes had different behavior from those of
the same types but in larger scales (Abo-Hamad et al. 2015).
Anicai et al. (2015) investigated the synthesis of TiO2 nano-
powders using electrochemical techniques in ChCl-based
DESs. In this work, the obtained TiO2 nano­powders showed
a stable anatase structure after the thermal treatment at
400–600°C, with a narrow size distribution of 8–18 nm and
high surface area in the range of 70–90 m2 g− 1 (Anicai et al.
2015). Moreover, Kumar-Krishnan et  al. (2015) reported
the structure-controlled synthesis of gold nanostructures
induced by temperature in a nonaqueous urea-ChCl-based
DES. The cyclic voltamperometry findings demonstrated
that the as-prepared Au nanostars exhibit remarkable elec-
trocatalytic activity toward H2O2 reduction compared to
other shapes synthesized at different temperatures (Kumar-
Krishnan et al. 2015). In another study, Zhang et al. (2015)
reported the fabrication of nanoporous copper films by a
facile electrochemical alloying/dealloying process without
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       9
the need of a template. It was deduced that the method for
the preparation of nanoporous copper using DESs is faster
(less than 1 h), more environmentally sustainable and recy-
clable compared to the traditional acidic or alkaline solu-
tions which generally takes more than 12  h (Zhang et  al.
2015). Tohidi et al. (2015) synthesized ultra-thin and large
gold nanosheets by using a DES as a reducing and directing
agent with gum arabic (GA) as a stabilizer and shape-con-
trolling agent through a seedless protocol at room tempera-
ture. In this work, the synthesized gold nanosheets were
used for the modification of a carbon ionic liquid electrode
(CILE). It was found that a high electrocatalytic effect of a
gold nanocomposite CILE was observed toward hydrazine
oxidation (Tohidi et al. 2015). In addition to the above-men-
tioned contributions, Raghuwanshi et  al. (2014) reported
the formation and growth mechanisms of gold nanoparti-
cles (AuNPs) in ChCl : urea. They synthesized AuNPs on the
DES surface via a low-energy sputter deposition method.
The recent contributions of the applications of DESs in
nanotechnology show further potential expansion of DESs
in chemical and engineering industry. It is expected that
DESs will cover many other industrial applications due to
their unique similar properties to ILs, easy preparation and
low economic cost.
2.4.2 DESs in enhancing oil recovery
Neoteric application of DESs was investigated by Mohsen-
zadeh et al. (2015a,b). In their study, ChCl : GL (1 : 2) and
ChCl : urea (1 : 2) were reported to be effective in enhanc-
ing heavy oil recovery. The findings of this work showed
that the implemented DESs did not make emulsion with
the heavy oil. They increased the interfacial tension (IFT)
of the oil-brine system. Additionally, the used DESs altered
the wettability of the sandstone rock surfaces from liquid-
wetting toward intermediately air-wetting conditions at an
oil-air-rock system (Mohsenzadeh et al. 2015a,b). Further
investigation was performed by the same group examin-
ing the possible effects of ChCl : GL and ChCl : urea on
sandstone formation damage. It was reported that despite
the role of DES solutions in preventing severe water shock
damage and stabilizing the clays, there was still some
formation damage caused by re-crystallization and pre-
cipitation processes reducing the permeability of the core
samples (Mohsenzadeh et al. 2015a,b). In addition, Hadj-
Kali et  al. (2015) reported the application of ChCl : urea-
and ChCl : GL-based DESs as surfactants for enhanced oil
recovery. In this article, the IFT of a crude oil-brine system
was measured in the presence of selected DESs. It was
reported that IFT decreases with increasing temperature
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 10      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs

and DES concentration. Moreover, it was found that the

Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b

Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b
Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b

Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b

Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b
Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b
DES or its constituents affect the IFT similarly and are

Hayyan et al. 2015

Hayyan et al. 2015
Hayyan et al. 2015

Hayyan et al. 2015

Hayyan et al. 2015

potential surfactants (Hadj-Kali et  al. 2015). Clearly, the
mentioned contributions revealed that DESs prove their
  WC (mg/kg)  References

promising applications for enhancing oil recovery techno-

logy (Hadj-Kali et al. 2015, Mohsenzadeh et al. 2015a,b).

–
–

–
6958 
8128 
10,340 
806 
817 
923 
9173 
– 
– 
7062 
563 
413.1 
661 
– 
2.4.3 Electrodeposition in DESs

Currently, electrodeposition of metals using ILs and DESs

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  1.2889 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al. 2013

  1.203 (25°C)  Ghareh Bagh et al. 2013

is a topic which is gaining significant attention due to the
1.23 (25°C)  Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c

1.10 (25°C)  Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c

1.17 (25°C)  Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c
1.30 (25°C)  Shahbaz et al. 2012–c

ability to deposit reactive metals and metal alloys that are

  1.147 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
1.14 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015
1.19 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015

  1.1159 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015

  1.126 (25°C)  Hayyan et al. 2015

1.12 (25°C)  Smith et al. 2014
1.18 (25°C)  Smith et al. 2014

1.24 (25°C)  Smith et al. 2014

otherwise not attainable in aqueous solution and to access
novel architectures (Abbott et al. 2015). In aqueous solu-
  References

tions, electrodeposition of metals is generally restricted

to those exhibiting a redox potential higher than that
of water (Zhang et  al. 2012). Organic solvents are attrac-
tive for electrodeposition mainly because some of them
exhibit a potential window that is 1.5–2.5 times wider
  ρ (g cm− 1)

than that of common aqueous acid electrolytes (Zhang

et al. 2012). In recent years, DESs have received growing
interest for their use as electrolytes. In particular, their
 
 
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
− 31  Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c
  1 : 2  − 1.33  Shahbaz et al. 2012a–c
15.75  Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b

  1 : 3  − 32.65  Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b

tolerance to water together with their low price and bio-

− 66  Shahbaz et al. 2010
− 40  Abbott et al. 2011b

degradability represents three major advantages over ILs

  1 : 4  − 49.35  Shabaz et al. 2011
  1 : 3  − 5.55  Shabaz et al. 2011
  1 : 10  − 19.52  Hayyan et al. 2015
  1 : 8  − 19.49  Hayyan et al. 2015
  1 : 4  − 18.17  Hayyan et al. 2015

  1 : 4  − 16.59  Hayyan et al. 2015

  1 : 3  − 19.83  Hayyan et al. 2015

12  Abbott et al. 2003

(Zhang et al. 2012). Several recent studies in the literature

addressed the application of DESs in electrodeposition.
Tf (°C)  References

For example, Abbott et al. (2015) investigated the electro-

deposition of nickel using DESs and aqueous solutions. It
was shown that under the same conditions of concentra-
tion and temperature nickel can be electrodeposited at
comparable rates from a DES and two aqueous solutions.
In addition, the findings of this work show that the vis-
  Ratio 

  1 : 4 

  1 : 2 

  1 : 2 
  1 : 2 

  1 : 2 

cosity and conductivity are not the rate-limiting factors for

metal deposition (Abbott et al. 2015). In another study, Ru
Table 3: Density (ρ) and water content (WC) of particular DESs.

Triethylene glycol
Triethylene glycol
Triethylene glycol

Triethylene glycol

Triethylene glycol

et al. (2015a,b) reported the preparation of lead powders

  Hydrogen bond

Ethylene glycol

Ethylene glycol

Ethylene glycol

with different morphologies, including corals, rods, wires,

needles, ferns and dendritic forms, by electrodeposition
Glycerol
Glycerol

Glycerol

Glycerol
Glycerol

from different PbO-containing ChCl : urea-based DESs.

donor

Urea

It was concluded that different shapes of lead powders

can be prepared onto a stainless steel substrate by elec-
 
Benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride  
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide  
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide  
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide  
Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide  
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride  
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride  
N,N-Diethylethanol ammonium chloride  
 
 
 
 
 

trodeposition from PbO-containing. In addition, cyclic

Allyltriphenylphosphonium bromide

voltammetry indicates that the increase of PbO concentra-

tion makes the reduction potential EPb(II)/Pb shift posi-
tively and facilitates the electrodeposition of lead from
the DES (Ru et al. 2015a,b). Moreover, Ru et al. (2015a,b)
investigated the use of ChCl : urea for the preparation of
Choline chloride
Choline chloride
Choline chloride
Choline chloride
Choline chloride

sub-micrometer lead wires by electrodeposition. In this

Halide salt

study, cyclic voltammetry was carried out to preliminarily

analyze the electrochemical behavior of the PbO dissolved
in a ChCl : urea-based DES (Ru et al. 2015a,b). In addition,

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one-step electrodeposition of copper, indium and gallium
from ChCl : urea was investigated by Malaquias et  al.
(2015). Rotating disk electrode cyclic voltammetry
was used to study the electrochemical behavior of the
ChCl : U-CuCl2-InCl3-GaCl3 system.
This investigation revealed several redox responses
which were related to the deposition and stripping of dif-
ferent Cux(In,Ga)y intermetallics (Malaquias et al. 2015).
The electrochemical behavior of Ni in the presence of
micro- or nano-sized SiC particles was investigated by
Li et  al. (2015a). In this work, ChCl : EG was used as an
electrolyte to electrodeposit Ni matrix composite coatings
containing either micro- or nano-sized SiC particles. It
was found that the addition of micro- or nano-sized SiC
particles have significant effects on the nucleation mech-
anism of Ni in a ChCl : EG-based DES (Li et al. 2015a). Li
et al. (2015b) also reported the preparation of novel zinc-
graphene oxide (Zn-GO) composite coatings by pulse elec-
trodeposition in a ChCl : urea-based DES. In this study, the
surface morphology and textured structure of the Zn–GO
composite coatings were quite different from those of pure
Zn coating, owing to the effects of GO on the electrochemi-
cal deposition behavior of Zn(II). The Zn-GO composite
coatings showed higher stability and better corrosion
resistance than the pure Zn coating and the corrosion
resistance of Zn-GO composite coatings increased with the
increase of the GO concentration. Several other studies
were reported in the last few years showing the potential
application of DESs for electrodeposition (Abbott et  al.
2011a).
2.4.4 P
 urification and production of biodiesel
Biodiesel is produced through a transesterification reac-
tion of vegetable oils either with methanol or ethanol
(Zhang et al. 2012). In this reaction, GL is released as a side
product. Unlike biodiesel, GL is polar. Hence, GL is com-
monly separated from biodiesel by liquid-liquid phase
decantation (Zhang et  al. 2012). However, a non-negli-
gible amount of GL remains in the biodiesel phase, thus
requiring extra treatments in order to reach the American
Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specifications
prior to its use in vehicles (Zhang et al. 2012).
Owing to their high polarity, DESs have been used
to separate residual GL from raw biodiesel (Zhang et  al.
2012). Very recently, Gu et al. (2015) have investigated the
application of ChCl : GL in NaOH-catalyzed transesterifi-
cation of rapeseed oil. They reported that the addition of
a DES could change the phase distributions of the com-
ponents in the reactant mixture, in favor of reducing the
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       11
side saponification reaction and simplifying the separa-
tion and purification processes (Gu et al. 2015). Moreover,
Bewley et  al. (2015) examined the use of waste GL from
biodiesel production as a component in DESs. Many other
publications have addressed the same matter in the last
few years. For example, ChCl : GL was introduced for the
enzymatic preparation of biodiesel from soybean oil.
Zhao et al. (2013) were able to achieve up to 88% triglyc-
eride conversions in 24 h through the evaluation of dif-
ferent eutectic solvents and different lipases, as well as
the study of reaction parameters (i.e. methanol concen-
tration, Novozym 435 loading and reaction time). It was
also found that the enzyme could be reused at least four
times without losing much activity (Zhao et  al. 2013). In
another contribution, Hayyan et  al. (2014) performed a
novel research study by converting free fatty acid (FFA)
content in acidic crude palm oil (ACPO) to fatty acid
methyl esters (FAME) using ChCl : p-toluenesulfonic acid
monohydrate. In Hayyan’s work, three recycling runs of
ChCl : p-toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate were achieved
without significant loss in its activity (Hayyan et al. 2014).
Moreover, Hayyan et  al. (2013a–e) introduced low-grade
crude palm oil (LGCPO) with high FFA content as a pos-
sible biodiesel production feedstock alternative. The DES
used for this work was N,N-diethylethanol ammonium
chloride : p-toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate (Hayyan
et al. 2013a–e). Another study by Hayyan et al. (2013a–e)
reported ­phosphonium-based DES catalyst [allyl triphe-
nylphosphonium bromide (ATPB) : p-­toluenesulfonic acid
monohydrate] for biodiesel production from industrial
LGCPO.
In order to predict GL removal, experimental data
of GL removal by means of DESs were used by Shahbaz
et al. (2012a–c) to design a new modeling approach based
on artificial neural networks. The DES used for this work
was ChCl : MTPB. It was found that the phosphonium-
based DESs were much efficient in attracting total GL
in comparison with ammonium-based DESs (Shahbaz
et al. 2012a–c). In addition, Shahbaz et al. (2011a,b) used
DESs prepared by ChCl and MTPB with different HBDs
as solvents for the removal of residual KOH content from
palm oil-based biodiesel. It was found that the removal
efficiency of KOH by all used DESs increased with the
increase in the DES : biodiesel molar ratio. Also, the tested
DESs were able to decrease the biodiesel water content to
a value below that stated by the international standards
(Shahbaz et al. 2011a,b).
Furthermore, DESs were implemented for biodiesel
production. Very recently, Kleiner et al. (2016) have devel-
oped an enzymatic transesterification process to obtain
a biodiesel quality approaching the EN 1421  standard
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12      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
without major purification steps. In this work, ethyl
ester yields of > 96 wt% with low fatty acid content were
achieved without purification. In addition, pure glycerol
was obtained in a single distillation step (Kleiner et  al.
2016). In other study reported by Hayyan et al. (2013a–e),
novel phosphonium-based DESs were used as catalyst
for biodiesel production from industrial LGCPO. It was
reported that a phosphonium-based DES showed high
catalytic activity in the pre-treatment of LGCPO. In addi-
tion, three to four recycling runs of a phosphonium-based
DES were achieved without losing its activity (Hayyan
et al. 2013a–e). Hayyan et al. (2014) also investigated the
application of ChCl-based DESs in the production of bio-
diesel fuel. In this study, DESs showed high activity in the
reduction of FFA in ACPO. They proved that DESs can be
used for the pre-treatment of the other waste and acidic
oils (Hayyan et  al. 2014). Additionally, Gu et  al. (2015)
investigated the use of ChCl : GL-based DESs in the prep-
aration of biodiesel catalyzed by NaOH. The findings of
this work demonstrate that the FAME yields could be up
to 98% at optimum conditions with the addition of DESs.
Moreover, it was found that the addition of DESs effec-
tively improved the FAME yield. Also the addition of DESs
was found to simplify the separation and purification
process (Gu et al. 2015).
2.4.5 Drug solubilization
Studies on the dissolution of organic macromolecules in
DESs are very scarce (Zhang et  al. 2012). Morrison et  al.
(2009) used ChCl : urea-based DESs to investigate their
capability to increase the solubility of poorly soluble com-
pounds by 5- to 22,000-folds when compared with the
solubility in water. Because the components in DESs are
pharmaceutically acceptable, they could potentially be
used as vehicles for oral dosing of rats (Aljadri 2013). The
application of DESs in pharmaceutical use needs further
investigations.
2.4.6 D
 ESs as electrolytes
In 2012, Zhang et al. reported a comprehensive review for
the application of DESs as electrolytes. Recently, Ghareh
Bagh et  al. (2015) have investigated the application of
zinc (II) chloride-based DESs as electrolytes. It was found
that the used DESs can serve as electrolytes in different
electrolysis processes (Ghareh Bagh et al. 2015). Previous
works have been conducted to investigate the application
of DESs as electrolytes. For instance, Boisset et al. (2013)
investigated the physiochemical properties of DESs based
on N-methylacetamide and lithium bis[(trifluoromethyl)
sulfonyl]imide as superionic suitable electrolytes for
lithium ion batteries. In addition, DESs were also used in
electrochemistry as electrolytes for dye-sensitized solar
cells (Zhang et al. 2012).
2.4.7 D
 ESs as co-solvents for enzyme-catalyzed
hydrolysis
Recently, researchers have reported DESs as promising
alternatives to traditional ILs as co-solvents for biocataly-
sis (Lindberg et al. 2010). Choosing co-solvents appropri-
ately can provide for higher reactant concentrations and
present a route to steer regioselectivity in catalysis and
hence product purity (Lindberg et  al. 2010). ChCl-based
DESs were tested as co-solvents in enzyme-catalyzed
hydrolysis of a chiral (1,2)-trans-2-methylstyrene oxide.
Ethane-diol, urea and EG were used as HBDs to make
theses DESs (Lindberg et al. 2010, Aljadri 2013). The reac-
tion mixture included DES, epoxide and potato epoxide
hydrolase StEH1. The effect of DESs on enzyme func-
tion was primarily elevations of the Michaelis constant
(KM), up to 20-fold, and with lesser effects on turnover
numbers, i.e. two-fold variation. The DES solutions dis-
solved 1.5-fold higher epoxide concentrations as com-
pared to phosphate buffer (Lindberg et  al. 2010, Aljadri
2013). The promising potential applications of DESs in the
industry have encouraged researchers around the globe to
investigate more on the application of these novel green
solvents.
3 DESs in NG sweetening
3.1 Introduction
The continuous increase of the emissions of CO2 from the
combustion of fossil fuels is predicted to produce large
impacts on the global climate (Liu et al. 2015). To address
this grand challenge, one viable option to control CO2
emissions is CO2 capture and sequestration (Liu et  al.
2015). There are three approaches to reduce CO2 emis-
sions from power generation plants: (1) post-combustion
capture by separation of CO2 from the products of combus-
tion, (2) pre-combustion capture by de-carbonation of the
fuel prior to combustion and (3) oxy-fuel combustion by
reengineering the combustion process to produce CO2 as a
pure combustion product (Sabouni et al. 2014).
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Post-combustion capture involves removal of CO2
from flue gas, which comes from the thermal power plant
combustion chamber as shown in Figure 2 (Figueroa et al.
2008). As reported by Liang et al. (2015), post-combustion
capture is the only industrial CO2 capture technology that
has already been demonstrated at full commercial scale,
e.g. in the TMC Mongstad in Norway (300,000 tonnes
per year CO2 captured) and BD3 SaskPower in Canada
(1 million tonnes per year CO2 captured). In addition, post-
combustion capture is considered as the simplest technol-
ogy to be implemented since the separation process can
be easily adapted to the existing plant (after the combus-
tion step) (Luis et al. 2012). Figure 2 illustrates the princi-
ple of post-combustion CO2 capture technology.
There are several technologies for post-combustion
CO2 capture such as chemical absorption, membranes,
hydrate formation and adsorption using different materi-
als such as zeolites, activated carbons and metal organic
frameworks (Sabouni et  al. 2014). Borhani et  al. (2015)
reported that chemical absorption is the most common and
cost-effective process in the post-combustion technology.
In addition, technologies based on chemical absorption
appear to be best adapted to this separation. Techniques,
adsorption, membranes and cryogenic, are less suitable
for post-combustion capture than other technologies,
mainly for the following reasons (Mondal et al. 2012):
–– A much lower partial pressure of CO2 in post-combus-
tion exhaust gases than in syngas originating from a
gasifier or a reformer.
–– The presence of larger quantities of dusts, impurities
such as SOx and NOx, and non-condensable gases
particularly oxygen.
The chemical absorption process for removing CO2 from
an NG stream is referred to as gas sweetening. Due to the
increasingly strict environmental regulations on emis-
sions from NG treatment plants and market demand for
high quality NG, the gas sweetening process has become
mandatory (Al-Lagtah et al. 2015). The chemical absorp-
tion for CO2 capture is based on the exothermic reaction
of a sorbent with the CO2 present in the gas stream usually
at room temperature (Sabouni et  al. 2014). This process
involves passing of gaseous CO2 through a sorbent solu-
tion until equilibrium is reached (Mondal et al. 2012). The
reaction of CO2 with a sorbent can theoretically be rep-
resented in three individual steps as shown in Figure 3
(McCann et al. 2008).
Initially, diffusion of CO2 occurs from gas to liquid
phase (McCann et  al. 2008). This step is a purely physi-
cal process and must occur prior to further reaction of
CO2 in the liquid phase. This step is called dissolution of
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       13
Steam
Power
turbines Nitrogen
200°C 15 psi
Fuel
Air Boiler CO2 capture CO2
Flue gas
N2 (70%)
CO2 (3–15%)
Figure 2: Principle of post-combustion CO2 capture. Redesigned
data from Figueroa et al. (2008) with permission from the corre-
sponding author.
CO2 (g)
Dissolution
CO2 (aq.)
Bicarbonate Carbonate
formation formation
Figure 3: CO2 absorption phenomena. Redesigned data from
McCann et al. (2008) with permission from the corresponding
author.
the gaseous CO2 (Mondal et al. 2012). The further step is
formation of bicarbonate and carbamate; in this step the
sorbent behaves simply as a base and reacts with carbonic
acid formed in the previous step with a CO2 to sorbent
ratio of unity (Mondal et al. 2012).
Since decades, chemical absorption processes with
aqueous alkanolamine solutions have been used for treat-
ing gas streams containing CO2; depending on the compo-
sition and operating conditions of the feed gas, different
amines can be selected to meet the product gas specifica-
tion (Mokhatab and Poe 2012). Recently, Pal et al. (2015)
have reported that methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) is
widely used as absorbent in the NG sweetening process for
removal of CO2; it is considered as a selective and efficient
absorber for CO2, as it does not form carbamate. However,
using alkanolamines may cause some industrial problems
such as their degradability, produced stable salts, corro-
siveness, foaming, energy dissipation, high operation cost
and easy wetting of the microporous membrane (Lu et al.
2014). These drawbacks create intensive attention which
significantly encouraged researchers to investigate novel
sorbents and improve their absorption efficiency and limit
their industrial problems with low economic cost. Conse-
quently, neoteric solvent generation has been emerged at
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14      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
the beginning of this century (Abbott et al. 2003). DESs are
widely known as green alternative solvents to ILs and con-
ventional solvents (Hayyan et al. 2015). These wise choices
of components can make DESs non-toxic, biodegradable,
cheaper to produce and easy to prepare (Zhang et  al.
2012). In recent years, to expand their applications, DESs
proved that they can be implemented in nanotechnol-
ogy, enhancing oil recovery and CO2 capture technologies
(Yang et  al. 2013, Abo-Hamad et  al. 2015, Mohsenzadeh
et  al. 2015a,b). Many investigations were published in
recent years reporting the potential application of DESs in
CO2 capture technology.
DESs can offer preferential use over alkanolamines in
capturing CO2 due to their promising properties. This work
discusses the recent investigations on the potential appli-
cations of DESs in CO2 capture. The focus is on both theo-
retical and experimental investigations reported recently.
Additionally, this article gives very recent update to the
applications of alkanolamine in CO2 capture. Finally,
future industrial prospects of CO2 capture technologies
with DESs are discussed in this article.
3.2 C
 onventional alkanolamines for NG
sweetening
Credit for the development of alkanolamines as absor-
bents for acidic gases goes to R. R. Bottoms (1930), who
was granted a patent covering this application in 1930
(Kohl and Nielsen 1997). In the early gas-treating plants,
triethanolamine was the first alkanolamine to become
commercially available (Kohl and Nielsen 1997). Since
decades, it has been reported that monoethanolamine
(MEA), diethanolamine (DEA) and MDEA are the amines
that have proved to be of principal commercial interest for
gas purification (Kohl and Nielsen 1997). Alkanolamines
may be mixed with other solvents to form new absorbents
gaining more absorption efficiency, as will be described in
the following sections.
Aqueous MEA is a benchmark solvent, which has
been used for more than 60 years in NG purification and
food-grade CO2 production (Xie et al. 2015). The degrada-
tion of MEA solution was to be around 10% of the total cost
of CO2 capture; thus, it is critically important to develop
highly efficient inhibitors (Zhao et al. 2015). Researchers
are addressing the possibility of alkanolamines to remain
as sorbents of CO2 with an extensive work to increase their
efficiency and decrease their economic cost. Recently,
Zhao et  al. (2015) reported two novel ionic degradation
inhibitors, which are MEA tartrate and mercaptoethyl-
amine tartrate. Also a simulation study using Aspen Plus
V8.0 software for the CO2 capture process by aqueous MEA
was investigated by Li et al. (2016).
Reports in the literature revealed that DEA is not
well investigated by researchers compared to MEA and
this is may be due to the difficulty in reclaiming the con-
taminated solutions that may require vacuum distillation
and the numerous irreversible reactions of the amine
with CO2, forming corrosive degradation products (Kohl
and Nielsen 1997). In contrast, MDEA is a tertiary amine
and commonly used for removal of acid gases from gas
streams (Mokhatab and Poe 2012). The MDEA solution is
preferred to use for treating sour gas due to its high equi-
librium loading capacity and low enthalpy of reaction
with CO2, which is essential to low energy requirement for
the regeneration process (Foo et al. 2015). Recently, Naja-
floo et  al. (2015) have measured the solubility of CO2 in
aqueous blends of N-MDEA and 2-((2-aminoethyl)amino)
ethanol at low CO2 loadings. The authors used the electro-
lyte SAFT-HR (eSAFT-HR) equation of state (EoS) success-
fully to model the solubility of CO2 in aqueous mixtures
of 2-((2-aminoethyl)amino)ethanol (AEEA) and MDEA
(Najafloo et  al. 2015). In addition, Fu and Zhang (2015)
reported the absorption performance and viscosity for the
CO2 capture process using [Bmim][Gly]-promoted MDEA
(N-MDEA) aqueous solution.
To enhance the properties and absorption efficiency of
alkanolamines, researchers are investigating the combina-
tion of ILs with alkanolamines to form a suitable solvent
for CO2 capture (Lv et al. 2015a). Several studies have been
reported addressing the application of mixed solutions
consisting of MEA and ILs in CO2 capture technology. For
instance, Foo et al. (2015) investigated the density and vis-
cosity of aqueous mixtures of N-MDEA, piperazine (PZ) and
several types of ILs. Moreover, Gao et  al. (2015) assessed
the role of mixed ILs with amine aqueous solution in CO2
capture. In this work, three different ILs with the same
cation, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium ([Bmim]), and dif-
ferent anions, including tetrafluoroborate ([BF4]), nitrate
([NO3]) and chloride ([Cl]), were used to tailor the N-MDEA/
PZ aqueous solution to assess their role in CO2 capture per-
formance (Gao et  al. 2015). Lv et  al. (2015a) investigated
the absorption efficiency of CO2 in an aqueous blend of
MEA and a hydrophilic amino acid ILs [C2OHmim][Gly]. In
another study performed by Lv et al. (2015b), mass transfer
and kinetics of CO2 absorption into aqueous MEA/1-hydrox-
yethy-3-methyl imidazolium glycinate solution were inves-
tigated. DEA has also been investigated for CO2 capture.
Recently, Lu et al. (2015a,b) reported the property and per-
formance of DEA glycinate ILs as a combined solvent. In
addition, Iliuta et al. (2014) studied the chemical kinetics
and mass transfer of DEA-IL ([hmim][Tf2N]) blend.
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In the case of low heat content fuel gas, the removal
of H2S is necessary for environmental reasons. For that
purpose, aqueous DEA is reported to be a common absor-
bent for H2S removal (Kohl and Riesenfeld 1985). Frazier and
Kohl (1950) were the first who proposed selective removal
of H2S by using N-methyl DEA. Besides MDEA, diisopropan-
olamine has also been reported to have a greater selectivity
for H2S over CO2 than either MEA or DEA. It is also proposed
that hindered alkanolamines such as 2-amino-2-methyl
propanol (AMP) show high selectivity toward H2S over CO2.
Mandal et  al. (2004) reported selective absorption of CO2
in the presence of H2S from N2 stream using two alkanola-
mines namely AMP and MDEA in a wetted-wall column. The
influence of amine concentration resulted in the enhanced
absorption rate of CO2 and H2S. However, CO2 absorption
was comparatively greater than H2S and consequently
reduced the selectivity factor. In the range of temperature
(293–313  K) both gases revealed opposite behavior with
CO2 absorption rate increasing with the rise in temperature
while H2S absorption declining with increasing tempera-
ture. The maximum selectivity observed in this work was
17.57 and 23.02 for AMP and MDEA, respectively. The acid
gas mass transfer has been modeled using an equilibrium-
mass-transfer-kinetics-based combined model for CO2 and
a gas-phase transport equation-based approximate model
for H2S considering negligible interaction between CO2 and
H2S in the liquid phase.
Because of the aforementioned disadvantages of using
aqueous alkanolamines in the absorption of CO2, many
research groups tried using other new methods. Wang
et  al. (2014) prepared silicoalumino phosphate (SAPO)
molecular sieves for selective separation of CO2 in the
presence of CH4 and N2. The authors prepared SAPO by the
aminothermal method by using diglycolamine and diiso-
propanol amine as structure directing agents for SAPO-34
and N-MDEA leads to the crystallization of ­ SAPO-44.
These alkanolamines were novel templates for the syn-
thesis of SAPO-34 and SAPO-44. The study revealed that
SAPO-34, prepared from diglycolamine, showed remark-
able adsorption capacity for CO2 from N2 and CH4 mix-
tures with a capacity of around 8.2 wt%. Additionally, the
adsorption capacity of the selected adsorbent was unaf-
fected by multiple adsorption desorption cycles. These
features suggested that the adsorbent prepared with this
template exhibits significant removal of CO2 from NG or
flue gas. Pedram et  al. (2014) studied DEA impregnated
on glutaraldehyde (GTA) crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol)
(PVA) membranes by preparing various blend composi-
tions (GA/PVA: 0.5, 1, 3, 5 and 7 ratio) for permselectivity
of the CO2-CH4 mixture. The authors performed a series of
pure and mixed gas experiments to evaluate the effects of
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       15
amine and crosslinking concentration, transmembrane
pressure and stability on CO2 facilitated transport through
the membrane. The PVA/GA (1 wt%)/polytetrafluoroethyl-
ene (PTFE) containing 15% DEA was selected as a suitable
membrane for selective separation of CO2 in the presence
of CH4 because of compact matrix, highest glass transi-
tion temperatures, low water swelling. While performing
mixed gas experiments, CO2 permeance increased with
the increase in crosslinker (GA) contents. The authors
reported lower permeance in crosslinked membranes as
compared to uncrosslinked membranes. In the case of
pure gas results, increasing GA/PVA mass ratio reduced
permeances for CO2 and CH4 compared with uncrosslinked
membranes (Pedram et al. 2014).
Despite the current use of alkanolamines in gas and
petroleum industry, many reports pointed out the degrada-
tion, high reaction enthalpy, low CO2 loading capacity and
other drawbacks of alkanolamines (Lv et  al. 2015a,b, Xie
et al. 2015, Zhao et al. 2015). In addition, the combination
of ILs with alkanolamines may not be recommended in the
industry due to the disadvantages of ILs, such as hazardous
toxicity, very poor biodegradability of most ILs, high price,
and their synthesis is far to be environmentally friendly
since it generally requires a large amount of salts and sol-
vents in order to completely exchange the anions (Zhang
et al. 2012). Consequently, the disadvantages of alkanola-
mines and ILs have intensified the research on novel absor-
bents to cover the gap caused by the conventional solvents.
Figure 4 shows the change of the interest of investigating
CO2 capture using a mixture of alkanolamines, alkanola-
mines/ILs and other solvents in the period 2010–2015.
3.2.1 Gas solubility in DES systems
Due to their advantageous properties, e.g. biodegradabil-
ity, nonflammable, high thermal and chemical stability,
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
Mixed alkanolamines
0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Figure 4: Number of articles investigating CO2 capture using mixed
alkanolamines in the period 2010–2015.
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16      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
high solvation capacity, low economic cost and easy prep-
aration method, DESs have become attractive solvents for
many potential applications in gas technology. The first
and recent published work reviewing DESs as CO2 absor-
bents in particular and gas separating agents in general
was reported by García et  al. (2015a). In their work,
solubilities of CO2 and SO2 in DESs were well discussed.
Recently, researchers have investigated DESs and ILs as
an alternative to conventional solvents for gas separa-
tion technology. Several research groups reported DESs
and ILs as absorbents in different gas systems. In 2008,
Li et  al. found that the solubility of CO2 in DESs formed
by ChCl : urea increases with pressure and is more sensi-
tive to the pressure in the low-pressure range. They also
reported that CO2 solubility decreases with increasing
temperature whatever the pressure. Additionally, they
found that the ChCl : urea molar ratio has a significant
effect on XCO [e.g. at fixed pressure and temperature, a
2
ChCl + urea (1 : 2 molar ratio) DES exhibits higher CO2 sol-
ubility than those with 1 : 1.5 and 1 : 2.5  molar ratios] (Li
et al. 2008). Very limited studies dealt with the solubility
of other gases such as SO2, H2, CO, and CH4 in DESs. Recent
studies demonstrate ChCl for SO2 capture technologies
(García et al. 2015a). Moreover, a 1 : 1 ChCl : GL molar ratio
has the capacity to absorb up to 0.678 g of SO2/g DES at
room temperature (Yang et  al. 2013). Clearly, because of
the limited studies conducted for the application of DESs
for other gases rather than CO2, further investigations are
highly required.
3.2.2 C
 hallenges with alkanolamines
Alkanolamines have several disadvantages; a typical one
is solvent degradation which includes three degradation
types: oxidative degradation with O2 occurred at absorber,
carbamate polymerization occurred at stripper and thermal
degradation encountered at temperatures higher than
205°C (Zhao et al. 2015). The solvent degradation was also
known to lead to foaming, fouling and viscosity increase,
which cause economic losses, performance decreases and
potential environmental impacts (Zhao et  al. 2015). For
MEA the high reaction enthalpy and the 2 : 1 reaction stoi-
chiometry with CO2 are serious disadvantages, reducing
the otherwise ideal properties of MEA for the post-com-
bustion capture application (Xie et al. 2015). In addition,
MEA has low CO2 loading capacity and high energy con-
sumption in the regeneration process because of the large
enthalpy of formation produced in reactions with CO2
(Hizaddin et al. 2015, Lv et al. 2015a). Alkanolamine solu-
tions require a large amount of energy for regeneration
(Shojaeian and Haghtalab 2013). Moreover, corrosion is a
major concern when using the alkanolamines, particularly
MEA and DGA (Shojaeian and Haghtalab 2013). Other dis-
advantages include the loss of the solvent because of the
high volatility of amines, which has negative impacts on
the environment, toxicity, low thermal stability, thermal
degradation in the absorption-desorption cycles, transfer
of water into the gas stream during desorption stage and
high energy consumption (Barzagli et al. 2013, Kim et al.
2013, Shojaeian and Haghtalab 2013, Hizaddin et al. 2015,
Lv et al. 2015b). In addition, using blends of the aqueous
alkanolamine systems makes the process economically
expensive ­(Barzagli et al. 2013, Kim et al. 2013, Shojaeian
and Haghtalab 2013, Hizaddin et al. 2015, Lv et al. 2015b).
Figure 5 demonstrates the significant decrease in investi-
gating the use of alkanolamines in CO2 capture in the last
few years.
Although many authors have focused on CO2 capture
without taking into consideration of other impurities such
as water and hydrogen sulfide, few works have reported
the effect of impurities in gas streams on the solubility of
CO2. Solubilities of CO2 in aminomethanamide + 2-hydroxy-
N,N,N-trimethylethanaminium chloride with different
varying mole fractions of water at temperatures of 303, 308
and 313 K were reported by Su et al. (2009). The authors
found a negative effect of moisture on CO2 solubility. This
result led authors to realize that water could serve as an
antisolvent to strip CO2 from reline. The absorption of CO2
in aminomethanamide+2-hydroxy-N,N,N-trimethylethan-
aminium chloride + water at low pressures was found to
be endothermic in nature. When water content was raised
greater than 0.769, the nature of the absorption process
became exothermic. The presence of sterically hindered
amines is favorable for H2S uptake (Su et  al. 2009). Lu
et al. used in a work reported by them a mixture of MDEA
and 2-tertiary butyl amino-2-ethoxy ethanol to separate
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Figure 5: Number of articles investigating CO2 capture using alkano-
lamines in the period 2010–2015.
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H2S-CO2 mixtures. The presence of sterically hindered
amine led to a selective capture of H2S from gas streams
(Lu et  al. 2006). Besides this, an electrolyte-UNIQUAC
model was developed to correlate the solubility data of CO2
and H2S in single and blend of aqueous DEA and MDEA.
The model took into consideration the molecular size
and shape through the analysis of structural parameters
of the CO2-H2S-DEA-MDEA-H2O system. The authors used
the ion-pair approach to explain the principle of like ion
repulsion and local electro-neutrality concepts. Their pro-
posed model did not discuss anything about the influence
of impurities but only represented the concentrations and
activity coefficients of all species, molecular and ionic in a
highly non-ideal system composed of CO2-H2S-DEA-MDEA-
H2O (Al-Rashed and Ali 2012).
The disadvantages of alkanolamines represent serious
problems which significantly affect their use in industrial
applications, specifically CO2 capture technology. There-
fore, investigating novel absorbents and developing their
absorption efficiency are highly recommended and indus-
trially required to overcome the drawbacks of alkanola-
mines. Consequently, in recent years, DESs have emerged
as possible alternative absorbents to replace alkanola-
mines in CO2 capture technology.
3.3 T
 he potential application of DESs in NG
sweetening
Investigating green alternatives to aqueous amine-based
solvents has always been desirable, and has been the
focus of many research studies in recent years (Leron and
Li 2013a,b). Low-cost DESs have attracted more attention
for their use in diverse applications (Ali et al. 2014). DESs
exhibit many favorable properties, such as availability,
non-toxicity, biodegradability, recyclability, non-flamma-
bility and low price (Ali et al. 2014). DESs have proved their
applicability to be implemented in CO2 capture technology
(Ullah et al. 2015).
3.3.1 T
 heoretical investigations on the solubility of CO2
in DESs
At the early stage of this research, there were few works
highlighting theoretical investigations on CO2 solubili-
ties in DESs. Ullah et al. (2015) used both DFT and mole-
cular dynamics approaches to analyze the properties
of DESs formed from ChCl as HBA mixed with levulinic
acid, glyceric acid, phenol, urea and GL as HBDs from
the nanoscopic viewpoint, and their relationship with
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       17
the macroscopic behavior of the system and its ability for
CO2 capturing. In addition, the behavior of the liquid-gas
interface was also studied and its role in the CO2 absorp-
tion mechanism was analyzed.
The behavior of DESs with regard to CO2, in addi-
tion to their low cost, and the suitable environmental
and toxicological properties, leads us to consider DESs
as a promising candidate for CO2 capturing technological
applications (Ullah et al. 2015). In addition, García et al.
(2015a–d) reported a novel work using DFT simulations to
investigate CO2 capture by ChCl-based DESs at the molecu-
lar level. This work involves GL and malonic acid as HBD
combined with ChCl. The analysis of water effect on CO2
capture was also carried out in this study. Useful infor-
mation regarding the suitability of DESs as CO2 capture
agents was reported. It was found that the studied DESs
could provide high efficiencies for CO2 capture (García
et al. 2015a–d). Ali et al. (2014) investigated a mathemati-
cal model based on the Peng-Robinson EoS to correlate
the CO2 solubility in phosphonium- and ammonium-
based DESs. This work was followed by an experimental
work which was in good agreement with its correspond-
ing theoretical study. It was reported in this study that the
obtained model can be utilized to study the effectiveness
of using DESs in CO2 capturing processes or any other
separation processes (Ali et  al. 2014). Yet, searching the
theoretical part of CO2 capture by DESs still needs deep
investigations and intensive work. However, it is expected
that the coming decades will witness a significant effort
in this area.
3.3.2 Experimental investigations of the solubility of CO2
in DESs
Several studies have been reported in the literature
addressing the application of DESs in CO2 capture techno-
logy and investigating the solubility parameter of CO2 in
DESs (Ali et al. 2014, Lu et al. 2015a,b, Ullah et al. 2015).
For example, Lu et  al. (2015a,b) investigated the solu-
bilities of CO2 in ChCl : levulinic acid DESs. This study
reported the solubilities of the studied DESs at different
molar ratios, different temperatures (303.15, 313.15, 323.15
and 333.15 K) and pressures up to 600.0 kPa using an iso-
choric saturation method (Lu et  al. 2015a,b). The results
of this study indicated that levulinic acid-based DESs are
more effective to capture CO2 than furfuryl alcohol-based
DESs. Additionally, it was found that the solubility of
CO2 in the DESs increased with increasing mole ratio of
levulinic acid to ChCl as well as pressure and decreased
with increasing temperature (Lu et al. 2015a,b). Moreover,
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18      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs
Ullah et al. (2015) and Ali et al. (2014) combined an experi-
mental work with a theoretical one to investigate the
solubilities of CO2 in different DESs. Both of the studies
compared their experimental work to theoretical one
and good agreements were reported for both studies (Ali
et  al. 2014, Ullah et  al. 2015). In another study reported
by Sze et al. (2014), ternary DESs were synthesized for the
capture of CO2. The DES investigated in this study consists
of ChCl, GL and a superbase component. It was found that
the best overall system was the one containing a 1 : 2 : 6
ChCl : Gly : (1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]-non-5-ene) molar ratio
(Sze et al. 2014). This system was found to be capable of
capturing 103 mg of CO2 per gram of sorbent and formed
two phases following CO2 binding (Sze et  al. 2014). It is
noticed that ChCl was the typical salt used for the prepa-
ration of DESs implemented in CO2 capture. Chen et  al.
(2014) reported that the solubilities of CO2 in DESs consist-
ing of ChCl : dihydric alcohols (including 1,4-butanediol,
2,3-butanediol and 1,2-propanediol) with molar ratios of
ChCl to dihydric alcohol of 1 : 3 and 1 : 4  were measured
at 293.15, 303.15, 313.15 and 323.15  K under pressures up
to 600.0 kPa using an isochoric saturation method. The
results reported in this study indicate that the solubili-
ties of CO2 in DESs increase with decreasing temperature
and increasing pressure (Chen et al. 2014). Moreover, the
DES composed of ChCl : 2,3-butanediol at a molar ratio
of 1 : 4 demonstrated the highest capacity to dissolve CO2
among all of the DESs (Chen et al. 2014). Lu et al. (2014)
also reported the solubilities of CO2 in ChCl-based DESs.
The HBDs used for this study were phenol, DEG and TEG
with different molar ratios (Li et  al. 2014). The tempera-
ture range for this study was 293.15–323.15 K under pres-
sures up to 600.0 kPa using the isochoric saturation
method. Additionally, in this study, Henry’s constants
and thermodynamic properties such as standard Gibbs
free energy, enthalpy and entropy changes of CO2 solva-
tion were calculated from the correlation of solubility data
(Li et al. 2014). It was found that the solubility of CO2 in
DESs increases with decreasing temperature and increas-
ing pressure. In addition, the DESs composed of TEG and
ChCl with the molar ratio of 4 : 1 demonstrated the highest
capacity to dissolve CO2 among all the DESs (Li et al. 2014).
In another study performed by Zubeir et al. (2014), lactic
acid was mixed with different salts such as tetramethyl-
ammonium chloride, tetraethylammonium chloride and
tetrabutylammonium chloride at a salt : HBD molar ratio
of 1 : 2 to form DESs which were implemented in CO2 solu-
bility measurements. In this work the thermal operating
window has been determined, and physical properties
have been reported for the new DESs prepared. Further-
more, the solubility of CO2 and kinetics of CO2 absorption
in the three DESs have been evaluated. The solubility of
CO2 in the investigated DESs (up to 12.7  mol% at 308  K
and 19.9 MPa) was found to be lower than that in fluori-
nated ILs (Zubeir et al. 2014). Thermodynamic properties,
such as Henry’s law coefficient, molar heat and entropy
of absorption of CO2 in the studied DESs, have also been
investigated by Zubeir et  al. (2014). Despite the low CO2
absorptive capacity, DESs show a tremendous tunability
of the thermal, physical and chemical properties (Zubeir
et al. 2014). In a different study, Lin et al. (2014) reported
Henry’s constant of CO2-aqueous DESs for the ChCl : EG,
ChCl : GL and ChCl : malonic acid systems. In this study,
differential Henry’s coefficient model was used to
describe the behavior of Henry’s constant and correlate
it with the temperature and concentration of the DES in
the aqueous DES solution (Lin et al. 2014). The results of
this work imply that Henry’s constants increase with tem-
perature, but decrease as the concentration of the DES
in the solution increases (Lin et  al. 2014). The correla-
tions, which were applied to the model, the behavior of
Henry’s constant (differential Henry’s constant equation)
and density (Redlich-Kister-type equation) as a function
of temperature and DES concentration in the aqueous
solution were satisfactory (Lin et al. 2014). According to a
study performed by Xie et al. (2014) for the effect of water
on the solubility of CO2 in ChCl : urea, the solubility of CO2
decreases with increasing water content, but the influ-
ence of the water content on CO2 solubility is not signifi-
cant compared to its influence on the viscosity studied by
the same group (Xie et  al. 2014). The operational condi-
tions of CO2 solubility measurement (ChCl : urea + water)
were temperatures of 308.2, 318.2 and 328.2  K and pres-
sures from 0.6 to 4.5 MPa (Xie et al. 2014).
In 2013, several articles were published investigating
the solubility of CO2 in DESs (Ji et al. 2013, Leron and Li
2013a,b). It was observed that in all ChCh was used as HBA
with different HBDs. Leron and Li (2013a,b) reported the
solubility of CO2 in ChCl : urea at T = 303.15 – 343.15 K and
moderate pressures. The results reported that the solu-
bility of CO2 in ChCl : urea at a molar ratio 1 : 2 increases
with pressure and decreases with increasing temperature.
The solubility data were successfully represented by an
extended Henry’s law equation as a function of tempera-
ture and pressure with an average absolute deviation of
1.0% (Leron and Li 2013a,b). Ji et al. (2013) investigated the
solubility of CO2 in ChCl : urea at different operational con-
ditions and different ratios of water (Ji et al. 2013, Leron
and Li 2013a,b). The operational conditions for this work
were at temperatures of 308.2, 318.2 and 328.2  K and at
pressures from 0.6 to 4.6 MPa. The research indicated that
the effect of water on CO2 solubility is considerable, while
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its effect on density is weak; small quantity of H2O will sig-
nificantly decrease CO2 solubility, while when water con-
centration is more than 10% (mass percentage), the effect
is weak (Ji et al. 2013). In another work by Francisco et al.
(2013), new DESs formed by lactic acid and ChCl were eval-
uated as solvents for separation of CO2. Additionally, this
work reported the characterization of the physical proper-
ties of the studied DESs such as density, viscosity, surface
tension and glass transition temperature ­ (Francisco
et al. 2013). The results in this study indicated low solu-
bility efficiency of the studied DESs compared to those
reported in the literature (Francisco et  al. 2013). Leron
and Li (2013a,b) reported the solubility of urea : EG-based
DESs; the experiments were conducted at temperatures
303.15–343.15  K and pressures up to 6  MPa using a ther-
mogravimetric microbalance. In this work, an extended
Henry’s law equation was applied to accurately represent
the solubility of CO2 in the DES (in molality) as a function
of temperature and pressure (Leron and Li 2013a,b). The
solubility of CO2 in the DES was found to increase with
pressure and decrease with increasing temperature, and
the values were within the range of the solubility of CO2
in [Bmim]- and [Emim]-based ILs (Leron and Li 2013a,b).
The same group (2013) investigated the solubility of CO2
in ChCl : GL at a 1 : 2  molar ratio and temperature range
303.15–343.15 K and pressures up to 6.3 MPa in a thermo-
gravimetric microbalance. It was reported that the solubil-
ity of the CO2 in the studied DES was found to increase
almost linearly with pressure and decrease with increas-
ing temperature (Leron and Li 2013a,b). The solubility was
successfully correlated with the temperature and pressure
using an extended Henry’s law model as suggested by
the average absolute deviation of 1.4%. The solubility in
molality of CO2 in the DES was found to be comparable
with the typical solubility of CO2 in ionic liquids (Leron
and Li 2013a,b).
During the search conducted in this work, it was
observed that in the years 2010–2012 no investigations
were reported for the solubility of CO2 in DESs. However,
in 2009, Su et al. published an article dealing with the sol-
ubility of CO2 with mixed solvent of aminomethanamide
and ChCl (Su et al. 2009). This investigation may highlight
interesting research which is the use of amines in mixing
systems to prepare DESs for the capture of CO2.
To the best of our knowledge, the early first reported
article treating the solubility of CO2 in DESs was by Li
et al. (2008). In this investigation, the solubility of CO2 in
ChCl : urea eutectic mixtures was determined at 313.15,
323.15 and 333.15 K under pressures up to 13 MPa and at
molar ratios 1 : 1.5, 1 : 2 and 1 : 2.5. It was reported that the
solubility of CO2 in the mixtures increased with increasing
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       19
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Publication trend
Figure 6: Number of articles investigating CO2 capture using DESs
in the period 2008–2015.
pressure, and the solubility was more sensitive to pressure
in the low-pressure range. In addition, the solubility of
CO2 in the DES decreased with increasing temperature at
all pressures and the enthalpy of solution was negative at
all conditions (Li et al. 2008). Figure 6 shows that CO2 sol-
ubility in DESs witnessed a significant interest during the
last 3 years. In 2008, the first article that reported the use
of DESs in CO2 capture studying the solubility parameter
was by Li et al. (2008). From 2009 to 2012 no publications
were reported. After that significant investigations were
reported by several research groups from 2013 to 2015.
It should be noted that the main disadvantage of many
DESs is their relatively large viscosities that hinder many
industrial applications because of prohibitive pumping
costs and poor heat and mass transfer in CO2 and gas sepa-
ration. This would require equipment oversizing and thus
lead to larger costs for CO2 capturing operations (García
et al. 2015a). However, there have been reports about pre-
paring low-viscosity DESs (η < 500  mPa s) (García et  al.
2015a). Table 4 shows some of these DESs. It is clear from
Table 4 that it is possible to develop DESs with viscosities
close to those of common organic solvents. The low vis-
cosities of DESs containing EG, phenol or levulinic acid
are especially remarkable for practical purposes (García
et al. 2015a).
DESs have gained a lot of attention owing to their
versatile properties. In contrast to conventional solvents
used for CO2 capture, DESs have many advantages such as
easy preparation, lower material cost, no by-product gen-
eration, non-toxic nature, lower viscosity, environmental
gentleness and biodegradable nature. DESs exhibit char-
acteristics of both ionic and molecular solvents that are not
found in ILs or molecular analogues. Unlike the volatile
nature of amine-based solvents, DESs have comparatively
low vapor pressure and hence reduced volatility. Many
research groups have explored different types of DESs
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 Table 4: Solubility of CO2 in different DESs.

Hydrogen bond acceptors   Hydrogen bond donors   Ratio   Temperature (K)   Pressure   mCO2   References

Choline chloride   Glycerol   1 : 2   303.15   5.863 MPa   3.692 mol.kg− 1   Leron and Li 2013a,b
      313.15   5.991   3.071  
      323.15   6.170   2.651  
      333.15   6.265   2.124  
      343.15   6.347   1.601  
Choline chloride   Ethylene glycol   1 : 2   303.15   5.863   3.126   Leron and Li 2013a,b
      313.15   5.902   2.614  
      323.15   6.167   2.1903  
      333.15   6.104   1.582  
      343.15   6.323   1.2168  
Choline chloride   Urea   1 : 1.5   313.15   11.84   0.201 mol/mol   Li et al. 2008
      323.15   12.52   0.191 mol/mol  
20      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs

      333.15   12.5   0.172 mol/mol  

Choline chloride   Urea   1 : 2   313.15   12.5   0.309 mol/mol  
      323.15   11.1   0.271 mol/mol  
      333.15   12.73   0.270 mol/mol  
Choline chloride   Urea   1 : 2.5   313.15   12.45   0.203 mol/mol  
      323.15   12.28   0.186 mol/mol  
      333.15   12.55   0.168 mol/mol  
Choline chloride   Phenol   1 : 2   293.15   99 kPa   0.0349 mol/kg   Li et al. 2014
Choline chloride   Phenol   1 : 3   293.15   104.4   0.0412  
Choline chloride   Phenol   1 : 4   293.15   108.2   0.0419  
Choline chloride   Diethylene glycol   1 : 3   293.15   112.8   0.0321  
Choline chloride   Diethylene glycol   1 : 4   293.15   110.4   0.0346  
Choline chloride   Triethylene glycol   1 : 3   293.15   109.3   0.0357  
Choline chloride   Triethylene glycol   1 : 4   293.15   119   0.0409  
Choline chloride   Levulinic acid   1 : 3   303.15   79.4 kPa   0.0351 mol/kg   Lu et al. 2015a,b
Choline chloride   Levulinic acid   1 : 4   303.15   72.5   0.0321  
Choline chloride   Levulinic acid   1 : 5   303.15   71.5   0.0339  
Choline chloride   Furfuryl alcohol   1 : 3   303.15   80.9   0.0263  
Choline chloride   Furfuryl alcohol   1 : 4   303.15   82.5   0.0306  
Choline chloride   Furfuryl alcohol   1 : 5   303.15   77.3   0.0300  
Choline chloride   1,4-Butandiol   1 : 3   293.15   110.9 kPa   0.0330 mol/kg   Chen et al. 2014
Choline chloride   1,4-Butandiol   1 : 4   293.15   109.5   0.0306  
Choline chloride   2,3-Butandiol   1 : 3   293.15   114.3   0.0308  
Choline chloride   2,3-Butandiol   1 : 4   293.15   107.1   0.0382  
Choline chloride   1,2-Propandiol   1 : 3   293.15   108.5   0.0365  
Choline chloride   1,2-Propandiol   1 : 4   293.15   104.4   0.0355  

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Benzyltriphenylphosphonium chloride   Glycerol   1 : 12   293   10 bar   0.0511 mol/mol   Ali et al. 2014
(n-Butyl)triphenylphosphonium bromide   Ethylene glycol   1 : 12   293   10   0.0503  
 Table 4 (continued)

Hydrogen bond acceptors   Hydrogen bond donors   Ratio   Temperature (K)   Pressure   mCO2   References

Methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide   Ethanolamine   1 : 6   293   10   0.1441  

Tetrabutyl ammonium bromide   Ethanolamine   1 : 6   293   10   0.1168  
Tetrabutyl ammonium bromide   Diethanolamine   1 : 6   293   10   0.1036  
Tetrabutyl ammonium bromide   Triethanolamine   1 : 3   293   10   0.0830  
Choline chloride   Urea   1 : 2   303.15   5.654 MPa   3.559 mol/kg   Leron et al. 2013
      313.5   5.722   3.115  
      323.15   5.782   2.787  
      333.15   5.845   2.394  
      343.15   5.911   1.986  
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   30.1 kPa   0.038 mol/mol   Hsu et al. 2014
50% + H2O
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   62.0   0.035  
60% + H2O
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   128.0   0.043  
70% + H2O
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O +    (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   75.2   0.148  
Monoethanolamine 50% + H2O + 15%
Monoethanolamine
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O +    (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   84.6   0.110  
Monoethanolamine 60% + H2O + 10%
Monoethanolamine
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O +    (Choline chloride + urea)   313.2   50.2   0.095  
Monoethanolamine 70% + H2O + 5%
Monoethanolamine
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   303   0.1 MPa   23   Su et al. 2009
95.58% in H2O
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   303   0.1   17  
86.2% in H2O
Choline chloride   Urea + H2O   (Choline chloride + urea)   303   0.1   5.2  
0.00% in H2O
Choline chloride   Lactic acid   1 : 2   348   19.27   0.0248 mol/mol   Francisco et al. 2013
Choline chloride   Levulinic acid   1 : 2   293   50 bar   2.316 mmol/g   Ullah et al. 2015
Choline chloride   Glycerol + 1,5-diazabicyclo   1 : 2 : 7   Ambient   Ambient   2.39 mmol/g   Sze et al. 2014
[4.3.0]-non-5-ene
Triethylbutyl ammonium phthalate   H2O   –   298   0.1 MPa   0.66 mol/mol   Wang et al. 2012a
1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride   Monoethanolamine   1 : 4   298   100 kPa   21.4%   Cao et al. 2015
(1.004 mol/mol)
Triethylene glycol (PEG150)   Diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene   1 : 1   298     1.04 mol/mol   Yang et al. 2011
Choline chloride + Urea (1 : 2)   2-Methylaminoethanol     298   2 bar   0.4385 g/g   Uma Maheswari and
Palanivelu 2015

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T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       21
 22      T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs

exhibited outstanding performance compared to their

Trivedi et al. 2016

starting analogues. The outcome of their work suggested

Deng et al. 2015

Xie et al. 2014
References that DESs exhibited unprecedentedly high gravimetric
uptake with faster kinetics. The proposed research efforts
have offered many advantages of using DESs such as sus-
tainable performance in water, good tolerance against
higher temperatures and thermodynamically low heat of

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
absorption. Additionally, DESs have higher potential in
0.169 mol/mol

0.54 mol/mol
0.056 mol/kg
resisting the corrosiveness due to stable hydrogen bonding
compared to MEA and ethylene amine.
0.3822
0.4313

0.053
0.060
0.057
0.049
0.151
0.143
mCO2

0.45
0.26
0.25
ILs are also considered potential candidates for CO2
capture owing to their tunable structural properties, but
CO2 uptake capacities are limited to lower molar uptake
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
4.376 MPa  
 
 
 

per mole of IL. Despite their tunable characteristics, ILs

Pressure

4.504
4.499
1 atm

require giant capital investment for bulk productivity.

–
–
–
–
1
1
1
1
2
2

Moreover, higher viscosities of ILs, lower molar uptake

values, their higher costs particularly amine-based ILs
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Temperature (K)  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

and inefficient energy consumption are causing impaired

process efficiency based on technoeconomical value.
293.15
293.15
293.15
293.15
293.15

DESs, on the other hand, sustain their performance even

308.2
308.2
308.2

303
303
303
303
298
298

in the presence of moisture content, and as a result quick

regeneration can be conveniently achieved. All these
advantages place DESs as a suitable choice over the con-
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

ventional and non-conventional solvents and materials

(ILs, alkanolamines, simple amines and some dry sorb-
(1 : 2) + 0.0185
(1 : 2) + 0.0910

ents) being used for CO2 uptake.

(1 : 2) + 0.183

The drawbacks associated with using other solvents

such as alkanolamines and ILs such as solvent degrada-
Ratio

1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3
1 : 3

tion, evaporation, corrosion, foaming and fouling may

devalue their applications for sustainable applications
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

toward CO2 entrapment. ILs are still being used for this
purpose, but in addition to the above-mentioned limita-
tions, some other issues such as multi-step synthesis fol-
Hydrogen bond donors

2-Methylaminoethanol
2-methylaminoethanol

lowed by purification steps, their moisture sensitivity,

toxicity and slow mass transfer rates led many research-
Ethylenediamine
Ethylenediamine
Ethylenediamine
Ethylenediamine
Levulinic acid
Levulinic acid
Levulinic acid
Levulinic acid
Levulinic acid

ers to replace them with DESs. DESs not only have lower
viscosity and depression in melting point, but they also
have good CO2 affinity, non-toxicity and non-flammability
H2O
H2O
H2O

that lie in the framework of green chemistry. Recent works

reported in the literature have highlighted the importance
 
 
 
 
 
Monoethanol amine hydrochloride salt  
 

 
Choline chloride + Triethylene glycol (1 : 4) 
 
 
 
 
 
 

of DESs prepared from ILs and other HBDs. These types

of DESs not only brought improvement in CO2 uptake but
Triethanolamine hydrochloride salt

Thioacetamide hydrochloride salt

also modified many physicochemical properties such as

Choline chloride + Glycine (1 : 2)

Tetraethyl ammonium bromide

Tetrabutyl ammonium chloride
Tetraethyl ammonium chloride

enhanced thermal stability compared to their basic struc-

tural components, moderate heat capacities, compara-
Hydrogen bond acceptors

Urea hydrocholride salt

Choline acetyl chloride
Choline chloride + urea
Choline chloride + urea
Choline chloride + urea

tively higher densities and lower viscosities. However, the

Table 4 (continued)

mechanisms governing the enhanced uptake of CO2 by

Choline chloride

DESs via free volume and/or on the strength of intermo-

lecular and intramolecular interactions are under debate;
such types of HBA and HBD blends offer insights on the
promising cost-saving alternatives for CO2 capture.

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Based on such structural features and physicochemi-
cal behavior, DESs have not only replaced conventional
solvents in gas separations but also in other areas such as
electrochemical processes due to their elevated conduc-
tivities, metal electrodeposition, electropolishing, elec-
troplating, biodiesel production, drug solubilization and
biocatalytic reactions compared to other conventional
solvents. Figure 6 illustrates the increase in the interest
in investigating the application of DESs in CO2 capture
technology.
4 Conclusions
Recent investigations on the applications of DESs in CO2
capture technology were critically discussed in this review.
Additionally, updates to the applications of the conven-
tional solvents in CO2 capture such as alkanolamines and
mixed solvents were also reported and discussed. The most
important properties of DESs reported in the literature were
also discussed, especially those that affect the solubility of
CO2. To sum up, DESs have proven their promising industrial
applications in several industrial applications and in CO2
capture in particular. Important results found by research
groups around the globe have shown the promising role of
DESs in the CO2 capture process. Studies on carbon capture
from complex gas mixtures such as flue gases or selectivity
studies are absent. In addition, the literature on gas solu-
bility investigations is limited to CO2 and minor studies on
SO2. It should be noted that DESs may solve many indus-
trial problems related to CO2 capture technology or other
gas technologies. Bright future is expected for these novel
green solvents. However, the scarcity of physical data for
many DESs, scarcity of corrosion behavior of DESs, absence
of results from pilot plant application and high viscosity of
some DESs may hinder the industrial application of DESs in
CO2 capture processes. Further investigations dealing with
the application of DESs in gas technology in general and NG
in particular are highly recommended. Due to its originality,
this field needs more work to be covered in terms of develop-
ing neoteric DESs with low viscosity, high absorption effi-
ciency and low economic cost. Bright future is expected for
these novel green solvents.
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowl-
edge Department of Chemical and Environmental Engi-
neering, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu
Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Laboratoire de Génie
des Procédés Chimiques, Université Ferhat Abbas, Sétif 1,
19000 Sétif, Algeria, for supporting this work.
T. Aissaoui et al.: CO2 capture using DESs       23
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Bionotes
Tayeb Aissaoui
Department of Chemical Engineering,
Université Ferhat Abbas, Sétif-1, 19000
Sétif, Algeria
t.aissaoui84@gmail.com
Tayeb Aissaoui is the director of EURL P.B.M Company, Algeria. He
is also a research student at University Setif 1, Algeria. After his
graduation as a chemical engineer from University Setif 1, Algeria,
Aissaoui joined University Malaya Center for Ionic Liquids, Malaysia.
He also gained a Master’s degree in Islamic and other civilizations
from Malaysia. In addition, he was the first director founder of
The Algerian Academic Forum, Malaysia. He is the ambassador of
The Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE) in Algeria for the year
2016. He has published in both chemical engineering and political
thought. His research interests include natural gas pretreatments,
molecular modeling, ILs, DESs and political thought.
Inas M. AlNashef
Department of Chemical and Environmental
Engineering, Masdar Institute of Science and
Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Inas M. AlNashef joined King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
after obtaining his PhD from the University of South Carolina in
2004. In 2011, he was promoted to associate professor. He was very
active in research related to green engineering and sustainability. In
June 2014, he moved to Abu Dhabi (UAE) where he is now employed
as an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineer-
ing, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. He co-authored
more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications. In addition, he
received 7 patents from US and EU Patent Offices.
Umair A. Qureshi
Department of Chemistry, Government
Boys Degree College Qasimabad,
Hyderabad 71000, Pakistan
Umair A. Qureshi graduated in organic chemistry from University of
Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan, in 2008. He earned his PhD in analyti-
cal chemistry from the same university in 2015. In 2013–2014, he
was also awarded a split PhD fellowship at University of Selcuk,
Konya, Turkey. He serves as a lecturer of chemistry at Government
Boys Degree College, Qasimabad, Hyderabad, Pakistan. Currently,
he is doing postdoctoral research on nanofiber preparations and
their applications in water treatment and gas capture at Mehran
University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, Pakistan.
His research interests include waste water treatment (adsorption,
advanced oxidation processes and membrane technology), ionic
liquids and their applications in analytical chemistry and enzyme
catalyzed degradation of recalcitrant pollutants.
Yacine Benguerba
Laboratoire de Génie des Procédés
Chimiques, Université Ferhat Abbas,
Sétif-1, 19000 Sétif, Algeria
Yacine Benguerba graduated from the University of Constantine
in 1998 (under the guidance of Dr. Mohamed Salah Koutchoukali).
He received his PhD in chemical engineering (under the supervi-
sion of Prof. Brahim Djellouli) from Setif University in 2011. In 2015,
he received the HDR (habilitation) at Setif University. His research
interests include computational fluid dynamics, molecular modeling
and optimization of chemical processes.
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