There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Green Chemistry is a relatively new emerging field that strives to work at the molecular level to achieve sustainability. The field has received widespread interest in the past decade due to its ability to harness chemical innovation to meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously. Green Chemistry has a framework of a cohesive set of Twelve Principles, which have been systematically surveyed in this critical review. This article covers the concepts of design and the scientific philosophy of Green Chemistry with a set of illustrative examples. Future trends in Green Chemistry are discussed with the challenge of using the Principles as a cohesive design system (93 references).

Green Chemistry: Principles and Practice

This critical review provides a survey illustrated by recent references of different strategies to achieve a sustainable conversion of biomass to bioproducts. Because of the huge number of chemical products that can be potentially manufactured, a selection of starting materials and targeted chemicals has been done. Also, thermochemical conversion processes such as biomass pyrolysis or gasification as well as the synthesis of biofuels were not considered. The synthesis of chemicals by conversion of platform molecules obtained by depolymerisation and fermentation of biopolymers is presently the most widely envisioned approach. Successful catalytic conversion of these building blocks into intermediates, specialties and fine chemicals will be examined. However, the platform molecule value chain is in competition with well-optimised, cost-effective synthesis routes from fossil resources to produce chemicals that have already a market. The literature covering alternative value chains whereby biopolymers are converted in one or few steps to functional materials will be analysed. This approach which does not require the use of isolated, pure chemicals is well adapted to produce high tonnage products, such as paper additives, paints, resins, foams, surfactants, lubricants, and plasticisers. Another objective of the review was to examine critically the green character of conversion processes because using renewables as raw materials does not exempt from abiding by green chemistry principles (368 references).

Conversion of biomass to selected chemical products

https://courses.washington.edu/cfr523/documents/Alonso2010CatalyticConversion.pdf

Catalytic conversion of biomass to biofuels

Conversion of Biomass into Chemicals over Metal Catalysts

http://www.scheikundeinbedrijf.nl/content/Modules/Modulenaam/Files/b719469m.pdf

The 24 Principles of Green Engineering and Green Chemistry: “IMPROVEMENTS PRODUCTIVELY”

Machine learning meets continuous flow chemistry: Automated optimization towards the Pareto front of multiple objectives

Maximising opportunities in supercritical chemistry: the continuous conversion of levulinic acid to γ-valerolactone in CO2

Real-time product switching using a twin catalyst system for the hydrogenation of furfural in supercritical CO2

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2020/GC/D0GC01247E

Richard A. Bourne

Papers

The 24 Principles of Green Engineering and Green Chemistry: “IMPROVEMENTS PRODUCTIVELY”

Machine learning meets continuous flow chemistry: Automated optimization towards the Pareto front of multiple objectives

Maximising opportunities in supercritical chemistry: the continuous conversion of levulinic acid to γ-valerolactone in CO2

Real-time product switching using a twin catalyst system for the hydrogenation of furfural in supercritical CO2

Making electrochemistry easily accessible to the synthetic chemist