Are Ionic Liquids Enabling Technology? Startup to Scale-up to Find Out

Commercialization of new sustainable technology from academia to industry is based on the technology-enabling innovation, the manufacturability, the implementation cost, and the technology’s competitive advantage, such as functionality improvement(s) over the routine process or existing products. Future-minded thinking outside the accepted margins and innovative execution are involved in creating new markets. The majority of this chapter is dedicated to our experiences in pursuing the transition of ionic liquids (ILs)-based technology from academia to industry for the extraction of chitin ((C₈H₁₃O₅N)_n), the second most abundant biopolymer on the planet, directly from shrimp shells. While the dissolution and extraction of chitin was demonstrated as early as 2010, the necessity of using an IL presented hurdles for scaling the technology to a commercial level. The resultant chitin polymer could be extracted while maintaining its high-molecular