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Solvents

Green chemistry strategies in pulping and biomass valorization: toward a circular bioeconomy

The transition toward a circular bioeconomy demands innovative, sustainable, and efficient technologies for biomass valorization and pulping. Green chemistry strategies, particularly organosolvent pulping pretreatment, are emerging as pivotal solutions to unlock the full potential of lignocellulosic feedstocks. Organosolvent processes employ environmentally benign solvents to selectively fractionate biomass components, enabling the recovery of high-purity cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin with minimal environmental footprint.

Path2Green

Approach to address the pressing need for efficient and transparent evaluation techniques to assess extraction processes’ sustainability. In response to society's growing demand for natural products and the consequent surge in biomass exploration, a critical imperative arises to ensure that these processes are genuinely environmentally friendly. Extracting natural compounds has traditionally been regarded as a benign activity rooted in ancient practices. However, contemporary extraction methods can also significantly harm the environment if not carefully managed.

Depolymerization Technology

Terracle specializes in the chemical recycling of waste plastics, producing high-purity recycled terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG) from disposable coffee cups, low-grade plastics, polyester, and PET materials. This is achieved through a process known as depolymerization, a form of chemical recycling. 

Solvents and sustainable chemistry

Solvents have many uses, both commercial and domestic. In the chemicals industry, solvents are used in the production of chemicals as media for chemical reactions and for chemicals separation/purification. Here, I attempt to demonstrate how appropriate selection of solvents for chemicals processing has been used to improve the sustainability of these processes using examples that have been, to the best of my knowledge using publicly available information, in commercial use at some time.

Convergent Process Mass Intensity Calculator

Process Mass Intensity is a common metric used in industry to measure the overall amount (or mass) of materials used to create a given amount (mass) of product. This calculator builds on the original Process Mass Intensity (PMI) calculator to accommodate convergent synthesis. Developed by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable, the Convergent PMI Calculator uses the same calculations but allows multiple branches for single-step or convergent synthesis.

MedChem Tips and Tricks

Produced by the medicinal chemistry focus team of the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable, this quick tips guide covers purification, solvent selection, reagents, energy, and resources to make medicinal chemistry more sustainable.

Chem21 Solvent Selection Guide

The Chem21 Solvent Selection Guide was produced through an academic-industry consortium in 2016. The consortium surveyed existing solvent guides from various organizations and companies, seeking to elaborate a standard ranking methodology. The methodology is based on easily available physical properties and GHS statements, permitting anyone to establish safety, health, and environment criteria of any solvent, even if full data on the solvents are not yet available. The guide includes classical and less-classical (including bio-derived) solvents.

Solvent Selection Tool

Given the importance of solvents to process mass intensity, solvent selection has been an area of intense interest to ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable member companies. While there are a variety of solvent selection tools available, this is the first tool that has been developed by practicing pharmaceutical process development experts. This interactive tool enables you to select solvents based upon a variety of key solvent properties. Solvents which are close to each other in the principal components (PCA) map have similar properties, whereas distant solvents are significantly different.