Solubility of biomass-derived compounds in ionic liquids is an important parameter for the design of future processes incorporating ionic liquids as solvents for biorefining. Sugar alcohols such as sorbitol and xylitol are carbohydrate derivatives which have been identified as building blocks for biorefining. Therefore, in this work the solubility of these two sugar alcohols was measured experimentally within the temperature range of 288 K to 433 K, in three ionic liquids: [emim][EtSO4], Aliquat (R) 336 (N-Methyl-N,N-dioctyloctan-1-ammonium chloride), and Aliquat (R)[NO3] (N-Methyl-N, N-dioctyloctan-1-ammonium nitrate). In addition, the densities of the ionic liquids were also measured and correlated. Local composition models such as NRTL, e-NRTL, and UNIQUAC were successfully applied to represent the experimental solubility data. The thermodynamic functions of dissolution were also calculated from the experimental data. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.