Insights into the separation of metals, dyes and pesticides using ionic liquid based aqueous biphasic systems

Abstract The designing of sustainable and eco-friendly method for the separation and purification technology is of great importance owing to pollution crisis. In a continuous development towards eco-friendly method, aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) composed of ionic liquids (ILs) has been identified as favorable system used in separation and purification technology. IL based ABS systems (IL-ABS) incorporated two aqueous phases: (i) IL and (ii) phase forming agent at particular concentration. The designer nature of ILs has great ability to manipulate the polarity of both aqueous phases and facilitate easy formation of ABS. IL-ABS has been successfully demonstrated for the extraction of desired compounds from water. The immense popularity of IL-ABS is attributed to quick phase separation, high efficiency, good selectivity and maximum recovery rate for targeted compounds. This review aims to provide comprehensive information on main observations and results obtained from the application of different kinds of IL-ABS in separation of metals, dyes as well as pesticides.