Green Chemistry and Sustainability

Green Chemistry
• It is the design of chemical products or processes that are more environmentally
benign and reduces or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances.
• It applies across the life cycle of a chemical product including its design,
manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal.

Benefits of Green Chemistry

✔ Economical ✔ Safer products
✔ Energy efficient ✔ Healthier workplaces and communities
✔ Lowers the cost of production and ✔ Protects human health and the
regulation environment
✔ Less wastes
✔ Fewer accidents
Principles of Green Chemistry
Green Chemistry is based on 12 principles introduced by Paul Anastas and John Warner

1. Waste Prevention
It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been
created. Thus, chemical processes should be optimized to produce the minimum
amount of waste possible.

2. Atom Economy
The synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation
of all materials used in the process into the final product.

3. Less Hazardous Chemical Synthesis

Synthetic methods should be designed to use and generate substances that
possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment.
Principles of Green Chemistry…..

4. Designing safer Chemicals

Chemical products should be designed to effect their desired function
while minimizing their toxicity. The design of safer chemical targets requires a
knowledge of how chemicals act in our bodies and in the environment.

5. Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries

The use of auxiliary substances such as solvents, separation agents etc.
should be made unnecessary whenever possible and when used, harmless
Principles of Green Chemistry…..

6. Design for Energy Efficiency

Energy requirement should be recognized for their environmental and
economical impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should be
conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.

7. Use of Renewable Feedstocks

A raw material or feedstock should be recognized rather than depleting
whenever technically and economically practical.
Principles of Green Chemistry…..
8. Reduce Derivatives
Unnecessary derivatization such as blocking agent, protection/
deprotection, temporary modification of physical / chemical processes should be
avoided whenever possible.

9. Catalysis
Catalytic reagents are superior to stochiometric reagents.

10. Design for degradation

Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function
they do not persist in the environment and instead break down into harmless
degradation products.
Principles of Green Chemistry…..

11. Real Time Pollution Prevention

Analytical methodologies needed to be further developed to allow for
real-time-in- process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous
substances.

12. Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention

The substances and the form of a substances used in a chemical process
should be chosen so as to minimize the potential for chemical accidents,
including release, explosions, and fire.
Matrices to express greenness
The greenness of a chemical process can be expressed by a term called
1. E-Factor (Environmental factor) introduced by Roger Sheldon
• It was developed to gauge the amount of waste produced during a process.
• It is defined as the mass ratio of waste to desired product.
• It can be calculated by

Total mass of waste

E-Factor =
Mass of product

Since water is produced as a byproduct in most of the reactions, but not

considered for the calculation of E-Factor because this would lead to very high
E-Factors.
Inorganic and organic wastes that are diluted in the aqueous medium must
be included.
E-factor of
• Zero : achieved by petroleum refining (Ideal)
• 1-50 : the production of bulk and fine chemicals
• 25-100 : production of pharmaceuticals
Weight of raw materials- Weight of product
E-Factor =
Weight of product

Higher E-Factor means more waste and leads to more negative

environmental impact
2. Atom Economy

• Introduced by Barry Trost

• It is an extremely useful tool for the evaluation of the amount of waste that will be
generated by different processes.
• It is the ratio of the molar mass of the product and the total molecular mass of a
substances forms as represented in the stochiometric equation for the reaction.

Molar mass of the desired product

Atom economy = x 100
Molar mass of all the reactants
Atom economy

• It is a measure of the amount of atoms from the starting material that

are present in the useful products at the end of a chemical process.
• The synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the
incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product.
• Green synthesis involves the maximum incorporation of the starting
materials and reagents in the final product - the percentage yield will
be high- more atom economical.
 OH O
+ ½ O2 + H2 O 120 X 100
Atom economy =
Ph CH3 (16) 122+16=138
Ph CH3
Molar mass = 122 Molar mass = 120 = 87 %
Matrices to express greenness

3. Environmental Quotient
• E-Factor and Atom economy are used to compare the reaction
alternatives. But there are different types of wastes, good or bad
wastes,
Good waste
OH O

+ CrO3 + 3H2SO4 + Cr2(SO4)3 + 6H2O

Ph CH3 Ph CH3
Bad waste
 Evaluating synthetic processes on the basis of only the amount of waste
produced is insufficient- Environmental Quotient was introduced by Sheldon

Environmental Quotient (EQ) = E-Factor X Q

Q= hazard quotient, it is a measure of both amount and the nature of the waste.

✔ EQ gives a better measure of the environmental impact of a process than the

E- Factor or the atom economy alone.
Green chemistry and Catalysis
In the light of Green Chemistry principles, a good catalyst possess the following
qualities
1. It plays a vital role in the environmentally benign synthesis of new and
existing chemicals
2. It is environmentally safe
3. It produces fewer by-products, co-products, and other waste products and
hence addresses the benefits of atom economy
4. It reduces more number of steps into less number of steps
5. It reduces the overall E-Factor for a synthesis
6. It minimizes the hazard.
Synthesis of methyl isocyanate
Conventional Method - Methyl amine and phosgene are the reactant

CH3NH2 + COCl2 CH3NCO + HCl

Phosgene-highly toxic Hazardous & Corrosive

Catalytic Method - Methyl amine and carbon monoxide

Catalyst Catalyst
CH3NH2 + CO CH3NHCHO CH3NCO
O2

✔ In the presence of catalyst, no byproduct is formed

R4M4 Models
To minimize the usage of chemicals thereby reducing the chemical waste, R4M4
Models are introduced
R4 – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Redesign
M4 – Multidimensional, Multitasking, Multitracking, Multifaceted
Econoburette

▪ It is developed for semimicro ▪ It helps the titration of volatile and

volumetric titration.
▪ It is used for risk free titration -
pipette is replace by an inbuilt
burette and conical flask by an
inbuilt bulb.
toxic solutions will full-proof safety.
▪ It minimizes the use of materials and
time
▪ It prevents the discharge of polluting
effluent to the environment.
Econoburette

Designed by Man Singh

▪ It consists of three graduated tubes which open in a
common glass bulb attached below.
▪ For an acid base titration, acid, base and indicator
are taken in each of the tubes and released by the
stopcock attached
▪ The mixture can be removed from the bottom of the
glass bulb.
▪ A glass rod is attached for stirring the reaction
mixture
Survismeter

▪ Survismeter is a device that provides quickly multitasking economic facility to users.

▪ This instrument is based on R4M4 principles for measurement of

surface tension,
interfacial tension,
wetting coefficient,
friccohesity
viscosity etc.

▪ use of minimum quantity of resources and minimum discharge of effluents to environment after
use.
▪ It is excellent in study of liquid-liquid interface (LLI) of two immiscible solvents.
Survismeter
Survismeter
Important parts
1. Sample reservoir or master bulb-
sample loading
2. Control pressure unit (CPU) –
carbureting and bypassing
3. Uniform functional capillaries –
fluid dynamics and monitoring
4. Functional bulbs – measurements
and regulatory
5. Buffer bulbs – equilibrium and
operational time
6. Lock and key junctions – monitor
sequential operations
7. Connectors – integrated unit
8. Liquid lifting device –
pressure gradient pump
9. Interfacial tension capillary – for
IFT
10. Electronic timer – for viscos flow
times
11. Pendant drop counter – for drop
counts
12. Leveler –
for vertical positions at 90 ˚ angle
13. Reflector –
for column rise in IFT capillary
E-waste

E-waste or electronic waste is created when an electronic product is discarded

after the end of its useful life. The rapid expansion of technology means that a
very large amount of e-waste is created every minute.

• Electronic waste or e-waste may be defined as discarded computers,

office electronic equipment, entertainment device electronics,
mobile phones, television sets, and refrigerators. This includes used
electronics which are destined for reuse, resale, salvage, recycling,
or disposal as well as reusables (working and repairable electronics)
and secondary scraps (copper, steel, plastic, etc.)
Why these became E-waste?
a. Advancement in technology
b. Changes in style, fashion and status
c. Nearing the end of their useful life
d. Not taking precautions while handling them

Why we should ensure safe disposal of these?

1. Landfill disposal allows heavy metals to leach into ground water
2. Incineration makes hazardous material airborne
3. Acid baths are dangerous and cause water and soil contamination
4. To ensure exported materials are handled properly
E-waste disposal
Most important method is recycling

Disassembly/ Dismantling:
It is the systematic removal of components, parts or a group of parts or a subassembly
from a product in E-waste.
Upgrading:
It includes comminuting and separation of materials using mechanical/physical or
metallurgical processing. Methods to recover materials include incineration and refining
Material recovery:
The materials are recovered by recycling facilities. The plastic, glass, metals can be
recovered by sorting them before mixing them with other waste.
Advantages of recycling

1. Asset recovery
2. Reduction of need for landfills
3. Reduction of junks and clutters
4. Resale and reuse
5. Creation of jobs
Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)
The two important concern of society are
1. natural resource depletion
2. environmental degradation
Remediation
1. Developing greener products
2. Using greener processes
Companies are trying to explore pollution prevention strategies and
environmental management systems to improve the environmental
performance of their products and practiced processes

One such tool is Life Cycle Analysis

Life Cycle Analysis

✔ It is a novel approach that provides a standard algorithm for the assessment of

environment impact of production operation
✔ Developed in 1980s

• The approach encompasses all stages of a product’s life

from raw material gathering through production and
consumption, to waste (i.e, from cradle to grave)

• It enables to estimate the cumulative environmental impacts

resulting from all stages of a product’s life cycle
This figure illustrate the possible life cycle stages that can be considered in an LCA and

typical inputs and outputs measured

Benefits of conducting Life Cycle Analysis

By performing LCA, analyst can

1. Develop a systematic evaluation of the environmental consequence associated with a given

product
2. Analyze the environmental trade-offs associated with one or more specific products or
processes to help gain stakeholder acceptance for a planned action
3. Quantify environmental release to air, water, and land in relation to each life cycle stage
and/or major contributing process
4. Assist in identifying significant shifts in environmental impact between life cycle stage
and environmental media
5. Assess the human and ecological effects of material consumption and environmental
releases to the local community, region, and world
6. Compare the health and ecological impacts between two or more rival products or
processes or identify the impacts of a specific products or process
7. Identify impacts to one or more specific environmental areas of concern
Limitations of Life Cycle Analysis

1. LCA cannot determine which product or process is the most cost-effective or

works the best
The information of an LCA study can only be used as one
component of a more comprehensive decision- making process assessing the
trade-offs with cost and performance
2. A single model for LCA may not fit everywhere due to the complexity of
environmental systems
3. LCA helps to identify potential environmental trade-offs. However, converting
the impact results into a single score requires the use of value judgements. Which
is made by the commissioner of the study or the modeler