I study the recovery of oil from oil sands and the simultaneous cleaning of the sand. Current methods of oil recovery pollute the environment and cleaning of beaches after oil spills is very difficult. Just like many leading research groups it is my aim to identify possible solutions to this challenge. The obvious starting point is to investigate how oil and sand mixtures can be separated. After some literature research and looking into several possible directions, I came across ionic liquids. These have suitable properties including polar and nonpolar parts. Still, the choice of a suitable ionic liquid remained challenging, but in the end I succeeded in separating oil and sand mixtures using ionic liquids.
