Preparation and Characterization of New Eutectic Solvents (DES) and Their Application in Ester Hydrolysis

Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) attracted considerable attention from research and industry, due to properties such as high boiling point, cheap and simple preparation procedure, and tunability, which among other things, allows them to actively take part to the reactions, when they are used as media. In particular, DESs composed by a Lewis acid and a Brønsted acid have been shown capable of promoting the hydrolysis of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) at significantly milder conditions than traditional media. Their chemical and physical properties, however, are still largely unknown. Among the reasons for this are the difficulties associated with studying the structure of liquid species. A series of diamagnetic Lewis:Brønsted acidic DESs were thus prepared to test a novel technique to determine the structure of liquids via Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and to gather information about PET hydrolysis by studying a model reaction