Functional design of polar ionic liquids for the challenge to the biomass energy conversion

Abstract

Development of ionic liquids for biomass processing, especially our recent development of functional ionic liquids has been described. For efficient biomass processing, we analyzed the physical chemistry of ionic liquids, focusing on the possibility to dissolve naturally-derived materials for energy conversion. We herein reviewed design of a wide variety of functional ionic liquids with special ion structure to enable dissolution of cellulose, extraction of valuable materials from biomass, and hydrolysis of cellulose. Moreover, we described a new class of an analytical method to analyze biomass processing with ionic liquids.