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.