Sustainable chemical production

Ranke J, Stolte S, Stormann R et al (2007) Design of sustainable chemical products—the example of ionic liquids. Chem Rev 107(6) 2183-2206... 

Catalysis as Enabling Factor of Sustainable Chemical Production... 

Ionic liquids are indicated as green solvents because of their negligible vapor pressure. However, major concerns exist regarding their impact and persistence in the environment, raising several doubts about whether they could really be presented as an advance towards sustainable chemical production. 

These represent a simplification over a true LCA methodology, and include also aspects related to safety and risk, and economics. They thus could be a basis, which can be adapted for specific cases, for a sustainable chemical production metric, which should be integrated with other assessment tools such as LCA, Sustainable Process Index, and Risk Analysis and evaluation. 

It is therefore necessary, particularly in Europe, to adopt a new approach to industrial chemistry, leading to the development of technologies/processes that require lower development costs and investment, and may thus be introduced more quickly to the market, allowing at the same time a better sustainability of the entire chemical sector. Rethinking the development model of the chemical industry is not only a necessary element to a sustainable chemical production but also the key factor to ensuring the role of chemistry as a driver of innovation in developing countries, a statement often cited, but not always transformed into action. 

The systematic elucidation of solid-state reactions both in synthetic and mechanistic terms opened the important field of waste-free sustainable chemical production with many more applications for environmental protection that can now be safely predicted. 

Sustainable chemical production requires maximising the amount of the desired product P, while diminishing down to zero the amount of residues, waste and emissions. Minimum waste can be achieved in industry by the following approaches (Christ, 1999) ... 

Ranke, J., Stolte, S., Stormann, R., Arning, J. and Jastorff, B., Design of sustainable chemical products - The example of ionic liquids, Chem. Rev. 107, 2183-2208 (2007). 

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