محبوبه شیرانی

In many industrial processes, large quantities of volatile and flammable organic solvents are used in various reaction systems and separation steps defining a major part of the environmental and economic performance of a process. Accordingly, a growing area of research in the development of green technologies is devoted to designing new, environmentally-friendly and tunable solvents the use of which would meet both technological and economic demands. Among proposed solvents, room temperature ionic liquids, supercritical and subcritical fluids and solvents from natural and renewable sources stand out as the most promising approaches for current solvent innovation. Current trends on incorporating the principles of green chemistry in analytical methods have led to the design and utilization of new solvents to replace conventional organic solvents, which characterize by their high volatility, flammability and toxicity. Among the alternatives that have emerged, amphiphilic solvents, ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents are the most explored candidates in this research field. Taking advantage of the solvation properties of these new solvents, together with the synthetic versatility in the case of ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents, a wide variety of applications of these solvents within green analytical chemistry appears in the recent literature. The aim of this article is to provide a quick summary of the state of the art on the utilization of these new green solvents in Analytical Chemistry, particularly in liquid-phase microextraction methods (within sample preparation) and as additives or pseudo stationary phases in liquid chromatography (within analytical separation methods).