Tetrahydrothiophene-Based Ionic Liquids: Synthesis and Thermodynamic Characterizations.

S-alkyltetrahydrothiophenium, [Cn THT]+ bis(trifluorosulfonyl)imide, [NTf2 ]- room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) and tetraphenylborate, [BPh4 ]- salts with alkyl chain lengths from C4 to C10 have been prepared. The ILs and salts were characterized and their purity verified by 1 H- and 13 C-nuclear magnetic resonance, elemental analysis, ion chromatography, Karl-Fischer titration, single crystal X-ray diffraction as well as thermogravimetric analysis. The experimentally determined density and viscosity decrease with increasing temperature. The experimental solubility of the [Cn THT][NTf2 ]-ILs in water (75 to 2.2 mg/L for C4 to C10 ) was modelled with very good agreement by Perturbed Chain Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (PC-SAFT), based on the extremely low vapor pressures for the [Cn THT][NTf2 ]-ILs measured in this work (4.15 to 0.037 ⋅ 10-7 ×psat for C4 to C10 ). PC-SAFT is able to predict and correlate different thermodynamic properties by estimating the Helmholtz residual energy.