Green chemistry is a major focus of chemists who try to limit their impact of work on the environment. Though it is a difficult process, researchers are working on it for the benefit of the planet.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has provided funds to several chemists to work on greening of chemical processes that are utilized to produce plastics, medicine and various other products.
A liquid is essential when two chemicals undergo reaction. Frequently, a toxic solvent is used for the process. Once the reaction is completed, the solvent needs to be dumped or recycled. Hence, a green substitute for the reaction is water, which is a safer solvent. Tiny, bubble-like particles, developed by Bruce Lipshutz, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, protect the reactions when they are enclosed by water.
Use of microbes is another method to make the reactions water-based rather than solvent-based. Jay Keasling, a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing microbes to produce useful molecules, usually enzymes. Chemists can either use the microbes or the enzymes to accelerate chemical reactions in water-based solutions.
Other NIH-funded researchers are focusing on modifying traditional chemical formulas to make the processes greener. As an example, the synthesis of a drug that stops blood clots in heart disease patients involves a 50-step process and produces useless waste. These steps have been reduced to a dozen by Jian Liu at the University of North Carolina and Robert Linhardt at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This resulted in producing more drugs and less waste.
A common method to accelerate a chemical reaction is by using a catalyst such as metal. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Shannon Stahl has developed a method to utilize copper and palladium metals to remove hydrogen from a range of chemical compounds.
Source: http://www.nigms.nih.gov/