Liquid-liquid equilibria in solutions with potential ecological importance

In the last three years, our research follows two main issues, defined by the slogans: "Green Meets Toxic" and "Green Meets Green". The first issue considers the potential use of ambient friendly solvents for toxic organic compounds of industrial and practical importance. The other is related to liquid phase behavior in solutions of ecologically sustainable substances. The "Green" solvents studied are: ionic liquids, liquid poly(ethylene glycol), glycerol and 1,2 and 1,3-propanediol. In the past ten years, Portugal has rapidly advanced in scientific research and development, showing a consistent state strategy in this respect. Statistics and facts obviously speak in favor to this claim: 1 i) in 2008, Portugal invested over 2,513,000,000 euros for this purpose, i.e., 1.51 % of the national BPD, which is the highest level ever, surpassing those of Ireland and Spain; ii) within the aforementioned funds, nearly a half came from the private sector and this increase is enormous - almost three times more compared to 2005; iii) the number of researchers per thousand active members of the population reached 7.2, being now over the average in the European Union; iv) Portugal probably has one of the best stimulation politics for private investments in research - companies could have tax reductions of up to 82.5 % of their scientific input; v) in the period 2004- 2008, Portugal had one of the best increase rates of scientific production - the number of publication per million inhabitants in journals acknowledged by the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) list, increased from 373 to 626 (nearly 70 %). This favorable scientific environment enabled, and still does, us the realization of good and productive scientific investigations. In the last three years, two main research topics - or slogans - emerged: "Green Meets Toxic" and "Green Meets Green". The first considers ambient friendly solvents for toxic organic compounds (generally solvents as well) of industrial and practical importance. However, the other topic is related to liquid phase behavior in solutions of "green" - ecologically sustainable - substances. Ambient friendly solvents of our interest are ionic liquids, liquid