New High-Throughput Mechanochemical Assisted Continuous Flow for the Formation of Deep Eutectic Solvents

ICHeM technology (Impact Continuous Heated Mechanochemical) was developed for the preparation of different deep eutectic solvents (DESs) such as choline chloride–urea (1:2, mol/mol), choline chloride–glycerol (1:2, mol/mol), choline chloride–oxalic acid (1:1, mol/mol), and choline chloride–zinc chloride (1:2, mol/mol) with graduate formation challenges. The designed DESs were obtained without external heating with a productivity ranging from 4.8 to 254 g min–1. Moreover, characterization of DESs using NMR, FT-IR (ATR), ICP-MS, differential scanning calorimetry, viscosity, and relative permittivity showed identical physicochemical properties compared with DESs obtained using conventional processes. In all cases, even and almost for more challenging DESs, the beads' mechanochemical assisted continuous flow process showed incomparable advantages in comparison with traditional batch preparation processes, in terms of performance, energy, operating time, security, economics, and thus industrial-scale reality. This new process opens the routes to meet the industry's new expectations for DES production to follow the future drastic development of this green solvent-based process in many fields.