Green and Sustainable Chemistry

Published: 17-Jun-2003

At Achema there were a number of lectures about Green and sustainable chemistry


At Achema there were a number of lectures about Green and sustainable chemistry

Green and Sustainable Chemistry covers the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and the generation of hazardous sub-stances. It includes such concepts as waste minimisation, solvent selection, atom utilization, intensive processing and alternative synthetic routes from sustainable feed stocks. The challenge for chemists is to develop products, processes and services in a sustainable manner to improve quality of life, the natural environment and industry competitiveness.

Green and Sustainable Chemistry issues are here to stay. The most successful chemical companies of the future will be those who exploit its opportunities to their competitive advantage, and the most successful chemists of the future will be those who use green chemistry concepts in R&D, innovation and education.

In this special session 'Green and Sustainable Chemistry' recent research results, synthetic concepts, and successful applications of sustainable manufacturing processes in chemical industry were presented in more than 40 lectures. Speakers from industry and academia discussed measurement tools and sustainability indicators to monitor the effects of these concepts, report on management activities for the integration of green and sustainable concepts into R&D programmes as well as on decision making processes.

In one of the keynote lectures Prof. Martyn Poliakoff, University of Nottingham, UK reported about the use of supercritical (sc) CO2 as an environmentally benign reaction medium. Heterogeneous catalysed hydrogenations and other types of reactions such us Friedel-Crafts alkylations and acylations can be easily carried out with a high yield and selectivity in scCO2. He also reported about a collaboration with Thomas Swan, a British fine chemicals manufacturer. Thomas Swan has developed a continuous supercritical fluid reactor which is integrated in a multi purpose pilot plant.

In addition to a variety of other topics several presentations focussed on the use of renewable feed stocks like starch, crop or lignin, to be used for fine chemicals but also bulk chemical production.

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