Thermodynamic description of liquid–liquid equilibria in systems 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate + C7-hydrocarbons by polymer-solution models

In the present paper, liquid–liquid equilibrium in binary systems containing the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate is studied. It was suggested in papers published by other authors that 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate could potentially be a suitable solvent for extracting aromatic compounds from mixtures containing aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as naphtha cracker feeds. To be able to assess the selectivity of 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate towards aliphatic, cyclic, and aromatic hydrocarbons, mutual solubilities of the ionic liquid and n-heptane, methylcyclohexane, and toluene were measured by the volumetric method. To evaluate quantitatively the quality of the experimental data and their agreement with available literature values, a correlation by two polymer-solution models, the modified Flory–Huggins equation proposed by De Sousa and Rebelo and the thermodynamic lattice model proposed by Qin and Prausnitz was carried out, the model parameters being optimized by a gnostic regression method.