Thermal properties of ionic systems near the liquid-liquid critical point.

Isobaric heat capacity per unit volume, C(p), and excess molar enthalpy, h(E), were determined in the vicinity of the critical point for a set of binary systems formed by an ionic liquid and a molecular solvent. Moreover, and, since critical composition had to be accurately determined, liquid-liquid equilibrium curves were also obtained using a calorimetric method. The systems were selected with a view on representing, near room temperature, examples from clearly solvophobic to clearly coulombic behavior, which traditionally was related with the electric permittivity of the solvent. The chosen molecular compounds are: ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-hexanol, 1,3-dichloropropane, and diethylcarbonate, whereas ionic liquids are formed by imidazolium-based cations and tetrafluoroborate or bis-(trifluromethylsulfonyl)amide anions. The results reveal that solvophobic critical behavior-systems with molecular solvents of high dielectric permittivity-is very similar to that found for molecular binary systems. However, coulombic systems-those with low permittivity molecular solvents-show strong deviations from the results usually found for these magnitudes near the liquid-liquid phase transition. They present an extremely small critical anomaly in C(p)-several orders of magnitude lower than those typically obtained for binary mixtures-and extremely low h(E)-for one system even negative, fact not observed, up to date, for any liquid-liquid transition in the nearness of an upper critical solution temperature.