Green Chemistry -
A Continuously-Evolving Frontier

The development of chemical goods and procedures that lowers or mitigates the production or use of hazardous materials is referred to as ‘green chemistry’. It covers all aspects of a chemical product's life cycle. This life-cycle includes the creation, use, and final disposal. The other name for green chemistry is ‘sustainable chemistry’. Through this blog, let us understand the dynamics surrounding the new chemical world.

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What is Green Chemistry Used For?

In order to achieve the highest level of the pollution-prevention hierarchy by reducing pollution at its source, green chemistry attempts to design and create chemical processes and products that are competitive in terms of price.

Foundations of Green Chemistry: Anastas and American scientist John Warner established the following 12 green chemistry principles in 1998 which were established to give scientists guidelines for creating sustainable long-term processes that are clean and environmentally friendly:

• To avoid accidents, encourage the use of chemistry that is inherently safer.
• Wherever feasible, avoid wasting.
• Encourage the "atom economy". Green chemistry has shown that high-efficiency atom economy is in fact possible through procedures like hydrogenation, metathesis, and cycloaddition.
• Decrease or stop producing derivatives.
• Utilize sustainable feedstocks.
• Employ catalysts (most of which require fewer materials to carry out a chemical reaction).
• Create safer chemical byproducts.
• Create chemical manufacturing processes that use little energy.
• In chemical processes, use green & bio-solvents and auxiliary materials.
• Create chemical goods that are safer and less harmful.
• Encourage the creation of real-time chemical product analysis to prevent the formation of dangerous substances.
• Create compounds that, after use, degrade into safe byproducts.

Benefits of Green Chemistry: Green chemistry allows the following benefits:

• Reduced risk of smog formation, ozone depletion, and global warming.
• Increased ability of chemical producers and their clients to compete.
• Chemical processes with higher yields that use less feedstock to produce the same quantity of product.
• Safer consumer goods of all kinds will be available for purchase, some goods (like drugs) will be produced with less waste, and some goods (like pesticides and cleaning supplies) will take the place of less safe goods.
• Chemical sector personnel will be more safely protected, dangerous products will be used less frequently, personal protective equipment won't be needed as often, and accidents will be less likely.
• Safer pesticides that are poisonous only to specific pests and quickly breakdown after use; elimination of persistent toxic compounds that can enter the food chain.

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Applications of Green Chemistry in

Pharmaceutical Industry:

Green chemistry is a new school of thought. Sustainable development can be aided by putting the green chemistry concepts to use and expanding upon them. This chemistry is being used to create cutting-edge, less hazardous, and more effective medicine delivery systems that could help millions of patients. It has developed from a simple concept into a fresh method of protecting the environment that is based on science. We can reduce material waste, uphold the atom economy, and avoid the usage of dangerous chemicals by employing green chemistry practices. In order to create procedures, select reagents and renewable solvents, researchers and pharmaceutical companies need to be urged to take the concepts of green chemistry into account.

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How Green Chemistry is

Changing the World?

There are four ways that green chemistry is improving things in the world. Today's green chemistry includes lowering our dependency on nonrenewable energy sources, cutting industrial carbon footprints, decomposing landfill waste, and utilizing abundant resources (waste) that nobody wants, such as carbon dioxide. Green chemistry has been essential in developing strategies for using CO2 as a resource rather than letting it accumulate in our atmosphere as trash. For instance, chemists discovered that CO2 molecules may be utilized as an industrial refrigerant to keep things cold when they are maintained in a transitive condition, also known as transcritical CO2, the dynamic state in which CO2 is at the point of transitioning from a liquid to a gas.
The carbon footprint of the paint produced by the Dow Chemical Company has decreased with the help of green chemistry. Although an essential paint component, titanium dioxide is costly and requires a lot of energy to produce. It serves as a base pigment in paint, concealing the original hue beneath the fresh coat. Dow Chemical Company devised a method to use recycled carbon dioxide (CO2) in place of CFCs, a greenhouse gas that has a negative impact on the ozone layer and air quality, was needed to create polystyrene. CO2 is a typical industrial waste that is both plentiful and easily accessible. This green chemical procedure helps lower CO2 levels globally by preventing 3.5 million pounds of CFCs from entering the environment and only using existing CO2.

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Green Chemistry in

Korea and Japan

Korea has been carrying out research similar to the eco-innovation initiative. Since 2011, the "Alternative Chemical Search programme" has been created, distributed, and used through this initiative to help small and medium-sized firms that struggle to gather data to assure compliance with international requirements. The programme offers information about 340 alternative chemicals, 70 application instances, the rules of important nations, and Korea. It also offers 1:1 consulting. Furthermore, South Korea is ranked 13th in the world for its market for green chemistry, which is estimated to be worth USD 97 billion. Korean businesses must expand into foreign markets as they only account for 2% of the world market for green chemistry. A possibility may arise as a result of numerous environmental changes and the green market's expansion. In Japan, breakthroughs and advancements in chemical technology that can enhance human and environmental health are referred to as "green and sustainable chemistry" (GSC). GSC Awards are given to people, organizations, or businesses who have done a significant deal to advance GSC through research, development, or commercialization. Depending on the accomplishment, these prizes may be presented by Japan's minister of economy, trade, and industry, the environment, or education, sports, culture, science, and technology.

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Recent Government Initiatives to

Promote Green Chemistry:

To raise awareness and spread green chemistry methods and technology around the world, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and partners have started a global Green Chemistry project. The collaboration will create curricula and training on green chemistry practices and document case studies of implementing green chemistry in developing nations and economies in transition. It will draw on a sizable research consortium led by experts at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and other international partners. The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award has been given out every year since 1996 by the United States in an effort to recognize and honor important accomplishments in green chemistry. Further, companies, academic institutions, and the government came together to launch the Green Chemistry Initiative in September 1998 with the goal of promoting technology that may be applied to sustainable development. The Green and Sustainable Chemistry Network (GSCN) was established in March 2000 as a result of this project.

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Future Trends in Green Chemistry

Future trends in green chemistry include the use of benign compounds as an alternative to harmful substances in oxidation reagents and catalysis, which have significant adverse effects on human health and the environment. In order to create reactions that can take place in the solid form without the use of solvents, supramolecular chemistry research is now being conducted.