Recently, it has been found that ATPS can be used for separations of metal ions like mercury and cobalt,[1] carbon nanotubes,[2][3][4] environmental remediation, metallurgical applications and as a reaction media.
In general, aqueous (or water-based) solutions, being polar, are immiscible with non-polar organic solvents (cooking oil, chloroform, toluene, hexane etc.)
The formation of the distinct phases is affected by the pH, temperature and ionic strength of the two components, and separation occurs when the amount of a polymer present exceeds a certain limiting concentration (which is determined by the above factors).
Besides the experimental study, it is important to have a good thermodynamic model to describe and predict liquid-liquid equilibrium conditions in engineering and design.
To obtain global and reliable parameters for thermodynamic models usually, phase equilibrium data is suitable for this purpose.
It has been shown that, in all cases, the mentioned models were successful in reproducing tie-line data of polymer/salt aqueous two-phase systems.