The Greener Organic Chemistry

Educators need to become both more familiar with and more comfortable teaching green chemistry concepts, and professional development is an effective means to do so. For example, the University of Oregon s annual summer workshop (28) has trained numerous faculty in greener organic chemistry... 

The application of biocatalysis, that is the use of enzymes as catalysts in synthetic organic chemistry, has a number of attractions for the chemist wishing to design greener manufacturing processes ... 

The second greener alternative that can resonate with the organic chemistry audience is biomass feedstocks, chemicals that are directly extracted from renewable sources (Tokay 2005). Biomass feedstocks... 

It is an aim of green chemistry (and good synthetic chemistry) to introduce as much useful functionahty as possible in the minimum number of steps. Unfortunately, this multi-component cascade couphng requires the use of anhydrous organic solvents. Nevertheless, it can be envisaged that the greener nanotin and electrochemical approaches described above could possibly be extended to this type of cascade sequence. 

McKenzie LC, Huffman EM, Hutchison JE. Greener solutions for the organic chemistry teaching lab exploring the advantages of alternative reaction media. J Chem Ed 2009 86 488-93. 

In the course of organic chemistry environmental impact of organic substances (especially those that are difficult to dispose and can accumulate in nature) on the environment is discussed in details to aim students on the search of greener and environmentally safe synthesis methods of valuable organic products rather than utilization of the wastes. 

Another approach to making organic chemistry greener involves the way in which a reaction is carried out, rather than in the selection of starting material, reagents, or solvents. Microwave technology (see Technique 7, Section 7) can be used in some reactions... 

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