Liquid Phase Behavior in Systems of 1-Butyl-3-alkylimidazolium bis{(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl}imide Ionic Liquids with Water Influence of the Structure of the C5 Alkyl Substituent

In the present paper a study of the liquid phase behavior in aqueous systems of imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) with the bis{(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl}imide anion is addressed. To highlight the influence of the C5 alkyl side group structure on their properties, a series of ILs with linear, branched, and cyclic substituents was studied. As was already shown in our previous work, very subtle changes in the cation structure at the molecular scale can have a significant and unexpected impact on the bulk properties. Therefore, in this work, the mutual solubilities of 1-butyl-3-alkylimidazolium bis{(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl}imide ionic liquids and water were studied, both experimentally and by modeling, at atmospheric pressure as a function of temperature from 293.15 to 328.15 K. The solubilities of the ionic liquids in water are very low, typically around 10⁻⁵ mole fraction units and were measured by a direct analytical method, making use of UV–Vis spectrophotometry. The solubilities of water in the ionic liquids were found to be around 0.20 mole fraction units and were measured using the cloud-point method. In addition to the experimental data, the liquid–liquid equilibria in the systems were modeled using the COSMO-RS methodology. Phase diagrams and the critical solution points were also estimated by applying the universal scaling laws based on the 3D Ising model, taking into account the non-linearity of the diameter and crossover to mean-field behavior.