![]() ![]() The source of renewable feedstocks is often agricultural products or the wastes of other processes the source of depletable feedstocks is often fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, or coal) or mining operations.Ĩ. Use renewable feedstocks: Use starting materials (also known as feedstocks) that are renewable rather than depletable. Increase energy efficiency: Run chemical reactions at room temperature and pressure whenever possible.ħ. If you must use these chemicals, use safer ones.Ħ. Use safer solvents and reaction conditions: Avoid using solvents, separation agents, or other auxiliary chemicals. Design safer chemicals and products: Design chemical products that are fully effective yet have little or no toxicity.ĥ. Design less hazardous chemical syntheses: Design syntheses to use and generate substances with little or no toxicity to either humans or the environment.Ĥ. Maximize atom economy: Design syntheses so that the final product contains the maximum proportion of the starting materials. Prevent waste: Design chemical syntheses to prevent waste. ![]() Until chemical reform is a reality, these 12 Principles of Green Chemistry can help provide this:ġ. When it comes to chemistry and all the substances it's constantly creates (The EPA gets approval applications for roughly 2,000 new chemicals every year - more than five new materials every day), it's obvious that some guidance is definitely needed, but clearly lacking. They're only for you and me in the sense that as they ripple through the chemical community, they'll eventually trickle down to us in the form of safer, healthier alternatives to today's more hazardous products and processes. They're for the people who are actually out there mixing things up. ("Stoichiometric reagents," for example, is a pretty scary term.) But the principles are not for me. I can't for a moment pretend to know what some of these principles are about. In the case of green chemistry, the 12 principles were created to encourage the design of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances. When we do, we often find that there's no decision to be made at all. Whenever a decision comes up as we proceed, we can compare all our possible choices to the principles at hand. Principles, of course, are always a good thing because they set certain benchmarks and establish concrete guidelines for whatever it is we're trying to do. It contained something that I didn't know existed: a set of principles to guide chemists in greening their labs and the things those labs create. While researching an article on Green Chemistry, I stumbled across an entry on the subject in the ever amazing Wikipedia. ![]()
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