Last week, two ionic liquids (ILs) related papers of the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IPE-CAS) "Green process for methacrolein separation with ionic liquids in the production of methylmethacrylate" (AIChE, 2011, 57(9): 2388-2396) and "The recent development of CO2 fixation and conversion by ionic liquid" (Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology, 2011, 2, 142-159) were marked as Hottest Articles in Chemical Engineering.

The application of ILs in methylmethacrylate (MMA) was studied in the first paper. MMA is a widely used as polymer monomer, mainly in the production of organic glass, coating, adhesion agent and PVC modifier. The traditional method was acetone cyanohydrins process with high safety in production requirement and heavy pollution based on acetone and hydrocyanic acid. Researchers from the Group of Ionic Liquids Clean Process and Energy-saving (ILC) of IPE developed a green process in the production of MMA using oxidation-methoxylation method, a two-step reaction. In the process, a novel way for methacylonitrile (MAL) absorption extraction with ILs was proposed and performed.

Separating CO2 from industrial gases and converting CO2 to value-added chemicals with ILs as solvents or catalysts have been regarded as the potential pathways to reduce CO2 emission and mitigate the global warming. Based on the related research of ILC and the recent progresses in this filed in the world, the second paper focused on the systematic research of ionic liquids for CO2 separation and conversion including CO2 physical absorption with conventional ILs, CO2 chemical absorption with task-specific ILs, molecular simulation of mechanisms of absorption , and catalytic process of CO2 conversion in ILs medium.