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Updated: Apr 12, 2026

Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass with Low-cost Ionic Liquids
Published on: August 10, 2016
Is seven the minimum number of water molecules per ion pair for assured biological activity in ionic liquid-water
Hiroyuki Ohno1, Kyoko Fujita, Yuki Kohno
1Department of Biotechnology, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan. ohnoh@cc.tuat.ac.jp.
Abstract:
Ionic liquids (ILs) containing small amounts of water are called hydrated ILs and they show diverse physico-chemical properties that are strongly dependent on their water content. Some properties of hydrated ILs, such as biological activity and phase transition behaviour, were found to change non-linearly, with an inflection at a water molecule to ion pair ratio of around 7:1. This critical hydration number of ILs has been discussed in this paper with respect to the state of solvated water molecules.
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