Changes in zeta potential of imidazolium ionic liquids modified minerals--Implications for determining mechanism of adsorption.

As the amount of industrial processes involving ionic liquids (ILs) increase the question of their environmental fate awaits an answer. Should ILs become a source of pollution they will primarily be found in soils and water. Interaction of imidazolium IL with soils is a complex interplay of many parameters making predicting their fate and mobility a challenging task. In order to shed more light on the mechanism of adsorption in soils we examined the interactions of imidazolium ILs with the major component of soils, namely mineral fraction. Within this work adsorption on kaolinite and quartz was investigated in terms of adsorption isotherms, partition coefficients and changes of zeta potentials of clays modified by ILs aggregates. The zeta potential was found to be dependent on the alkyl chain length of the imidazolium homologues. It can therefore be concluded that although adsorption seems to rely on electrostatic attraction, at least in the initial stage, the hydrophobicity of molecules is just as significant.