ABSTRACT
Environment regulations and a strict legal framework motivate scientists and researchers to develop clean technologies for sustainable development. Researchers amplify their efforts to convert separation processes like extraction and distillation into clean technologies. Liquid-liquid equilibrium (LLE) data help in the selection of solvent for the selective separation of the solute component. Since the past few decades, eco-friendly solvents like ionic liquids (ILs) have been considered as a better replacement for conventional volatile solvents. Extraction and recovery of valuable chemicals and products are the prime concern of any chemical industry. One such promising extraction process is biofuels such as ethanol, propanol and butanol from fermentation broth. Nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms are becoming increasingly popular to solve global optimization problems. They work remarkably efficiently and have many advantages over traditional, deterministic methods. Conductor-like screening model (COSMO) based models such as conductor-like screening model segment activity coefficients (COSMO-SAC) also determine liquid phase nonideality using molecular interactions derived from quantum chemical solvation calculation.
