Green chemistry

- also called sustainable chemistry, is a philosophy of chemical

research and engineering that encourages the design of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances.[1] Whereas environmental chemistry is the chemistry of the natural environment, and of pollutant chemicals in nature, green chemistry seeks to reduce and prevent pollution at its source.

Principles
Paul Anastas, then of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and John C. Warner developed 12 principles of green chemistry, which help to explain what the definition means in practice. The principles cover such concepts as:

the design of processes to maximize the amount of raw material that ends up in the product; the use of safe, environment-benign substances, including solvents, whenever possible; the design of energy efficient processes; the best form of waste disposal: not to create it in the first place.

The 12 principles are: 1. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed. 2. Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product. 3. Wherever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment. 4. Chemical products should be designed to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

5. The use of auxiliary substances (e.g. solvents, separation agents, etc.) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used. 6. Energy requirements should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure. 7. A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting wherever technically and economically practicable. 8. Reduce derivatives - Unnecessary derivatization (blocking group, protection/ deprotection, temporary modification) should be avoided whenever possible. 9. Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents. 10. Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they do not persist in the environment and break down into innocuous degradation products. 11. Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances. 12. Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen to minimize potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.

Trends
Attempts are being made not only to quantify the greenness of a chemical process but also to factor in other variables such as chemical yield, the price of reaction components, safety in handling chemicals, hardware demands, energy profile and ease of product workup and purification. In one quantitative study, the reduction of nitrobenzene to aniline receives 64 points out of 100 marking it as an acceptable synthesis overall whereas a synthesis of an amide using HMDS is only described as adequate with a combined 32 points.

Green chemistry is increasingly seen as a powerful tool that researchers must use to evaluate the environmental impact of nanotechnology.[6] As nanomaterials are developed, the environmental and human health impacts of both the products themselves and the processes to make them must be considered to ensure their long-term economic viability.

Laws
In 1990 the Pollution Prevention Act was passed in the United States. This act helped create a modus operandi for dealing with pollution in an original and innovative way. It aims to avoid problems before they happen. In 2007, Europe put into place the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) program, which requires companies to provide data showing that their products are safe. This regulation (1907/2006) ensures not only the assessment of the chemicals' hazards as well as risks during their uses but also includes measures for banning or restricting/authorising uses of specific substances. ECHA, the EU Chemicals Agency in Helsinki, is implementing the regulation whereas the enforcement lies with the EU member states. The US Toxic Substances Control Act, passed in 1976, in principle has similar provisions but is not comparable to REACH as to its regulatory effectiveness. On September 29, 2008 California approved two laws which encourage green chemistry, launching the California Green Chemistry Initiative. The law requires California's Department of Toxic Substances Control to prioritize "chemicals of concern", and puts the burden of testing on the agency rather than industry. The laws were criticized by Paul Anastas, who stated that the laws did not go far enough in encouraging research, education, and industry incentives.[7] The law called for regulations to be in place by January 1, 2011, but universal opposition to the previously proposed regulations rendered

that date impossible. Mid October 2012 is the new target date for new draft regulations to be in place to implement the law.[8] Examples In the statement for the 2005 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for "the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis," the Nobel Prize Committee states, "this represents a great step forward for 'green chemistry', reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production. Metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the benefit of man, society and the environment."[9] The concept of green pharmacy was developed recently based on similar principles.[10] 1,3-Propanediol 1,3-Propanediol is produced by the bioseparation of 1,3propanediol using a genetically modified strain of E. coli.[11] This diol is used to make new polyesters for the manufacture of carpets. Natural product synthesis Research is currently also going in the area of natural product synthesis to develop reactions which can proceed involving green chemistry principles. Recently, Atul Kumar has developed an efficient and green method for the synthesis of tryptanthrin, a biologically active natural product, employing -cyclodextrin as a catalyst in aqueous media at room temperature from isatoic anhydride and isatin in excellent yields.

New microchip technology performs 1,000 chemical reactions at once

Technique may accelerate drug discovery for cancer, other diseases
By Rachel Champeau August 03, 2009
Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail. Toward that end, UCLA researchers have developed technology to perform more than a thousand chemical reactions at once on a stamp-size, PC-controlled microchip, which could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer. Their study appears in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Lab on a Chip and is currently available online. A team of UCLA chemists, biologists and engineers collaborated on the technology, which is based on microfluidics the utilization of miniaturized devices to automatically handle and channel tiny amounts of liquids and chemicals invisible to the eye. The chemical reactions were performed using in situ click chemistry, a technique

often used to identify potential drug molecules that bind tightly to protein enzymes to either activate or inhibit an effect in a cell, and were analyzed using mass spectrometry. While traditionally only a few chemical reactions could be produced on a chip, the research team pioneered a way to instigate multiple reactions, thus offering a new method to quickly screen which drug molecules may work most effectively with a targeted protein enzyme. In this study, scientists produced a chip capable of conducting 1,024 reactions simultaneously, which, in a test system, ably identified potent inhibitors to the enzyme bovine carbonic anhydrase. A thousand cycles of complex processes, including controlled sampling and mixing of a library of reagents and sequential microchannel rinsing, all took place on the microchip device and were completed in just a few hours. At the moment, the UCLA team is restricted to analyzing the reaction results off-line, but in future, they intend to automate this aspect of the work as well. "The precious enzyme molecules required for a single in situ click reaction in a traditional lab now can be split into hundreds of duplicates for performing hundreds of reactions in parallel, thus revolutionizing the laboratory process, reducing reagent consumption and accelerating the process for identifying potential drug candidates," said study author Hsian-Rong Tseng, a researcher at UCLA's Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, an associate professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. Kym F. Faull, director of the Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Lab at UCLA, helped the team with several challenges, including reducing the amount of chemicals needed for reactions on the chip, enhancing test sensitivity and speeding up reaction analysis. "The system allows researchers to not only test compounds quicker but uses only tiny amounts of materials, which greatly reduces lab time and costs," said Faull, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Geffen School of Medicine.