Pretreatment of cellulosic biomass is necessary for its efficient enzymatic conversion into fermentable sugars.  Ionic liquid pretreatments have proven to significantly enhance the rate of hydrolysis of cellulose (L. Liu et al 2008), but require large amounts of antisolvent to recover the amorphous cellulose.  Furthermore, some sugars may be lost to the antisolvent phase, particularly if water is used. One way to overcome this would be to extract any sugars directly from the ionic liquid prior to the addition of antisolvent.  Solvent extraction technology, based on the chemical affinity of boronates to complex sugars, has been shown to successfully remove glucose and other sugars from aqueous solutions (M. Matsumoto 2004). This technique was tested for specific ionic liquids containing xylose, glucose, and cellobiose, using phenylboronic acid and aliquot 336 as an ion-pair extractant.  Various pH levels (7-12) and temperatures (30-50°C) were also examined experimentally to determine optimal extraction conditions.