CHEMISTRY GOES GREEN

Abstract

Green chemistry emerged in the 1990s when research increasingly focused on the development of environmentally benign alternatives to hazardous chemical processes. This was prompted by a rising awareness of the costs of waste in industries, and the need for cleaner chemical manufacturing in governments. Through a combination of targeted research funding, tougher legislation and awards for best practice, the green chemistry movement quickly gained momentum and helped nurture what are now well-recognized clean technologies in process chemistry. Wasteful separations, for example, were addressed through the use of supercritical CO2; atmospherically damaging volatile organic solvents were replaced by non-volatile ionic liquids; and heterogeneous reagents and catalysts were introduced to avoid the use of soluble reagents and other process additives that were hazardous or difficult to separate.