Parajó Vieito, Juan JoséVallet Moreno, PabloVarela Cabo, Luis MiguelVillanueva López, MaríaSalgado Carballo, Josefa2022-08-032022-08-032021Environmental Science and Pollution Research 29, 24983–24994 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17515-1http://hdl.handle.net/10347/29001The applicability of ionic liquids (ILs) has increased over the last years, and even new opportunities are becoming a reality, i.e. mixtures of pure IL and inorganic salt as electrolytes for smart electrochemical devices, yet the effects on the environment are almost unknown. In this work, the ecotoxicity of two pure protic ILs (Ethylammonium nitrate and Ethylimidazolium nitrate) and two pure aprotic ILs (butylmethylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide and butyldimethylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide) and that of their binary mixtures with inorganic salts with common cation was tested towards changes in the bioluminescence of the bacteria Aliivibrio fischeri, using the Microtox® standard toxicity test. EC50 of these mixtures was determined over three standard periods of time and compared with the corresponding values to pure ILs. Results indicate that the aprotic ILs are more toxic than protic and that aromatic are more toxic than non-aromatic. The addition of inorganic mono (LiNO3), di (Ca(NO3)2·4H2O, Mg(NO3)2·6H2O) and trivalent (Al(NO3)3·9H2O) salts in binary mixtures with EAN was analysed first. The latter was found to induce an important increase in toxicity. Finally, mixtures of IL-inorganic lithium salt (LiNO3, for the protic ILs and LiTFSI for the aprotic ILs) toxicity was also studied, which showed toxicity levels strongly dependent on the IL of the mixtureeng© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Atribución 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Ionic liquidsEcotoxicitySmart electrolyteMicrotox®journal article10.1007/s11356-021-17515-11614-7499open access