Greening up two Organic Reactions. Comparison of Reaction Conditions Using Various Green Chemistry Metrics

ROSSI, LAURA I.; VELASCO, M. I.; HOYOS DE ROSSI, R. M.

Congreso; I Taller Argentino de Ciencias Ambientales; 2010

Green chemistry was introduced with the aim to overcome health and environmental problems at the source by developing cleaner chemical processes for the chemical industry through the design of innovative and environmentally benign chemical reactions.1 We have analyzed our results obtained by sulfoxidation reaction2 and azo compounds synthesis3 in terms of reported green metric parameters. The proposed methodology fulfilled several of the green chemistry principles since the oxidant is oxygen from the air, the catalyst in the sulfoxidation is a non-contaminating metal and the both reactions are highly selective producing a minimum amount of waste. The green metrics were calculated using the procedures reported in the literature.4 They are defined as follows: This analysis is, of course, far from being exhaustive because many other green parameters were not examined. We concluded that, for example in the azocompounds synthesis, the favourable RME, CE and AE in the processes mediated by aqueous nitric acid and gaseous hydrogen chloride, inherently reflect the greenness of these reactions, attained by avoiding wastes and by-products. 1- P. Tundo, A. Perosa, F. Zecchini, Methods and Reagents for Green Chemistry: An Introduction. Wiley, 2007. 2- Results reported by us in diverse international journals. 3- Results not published. 4- D. J. C. Constable, A. D. Curzons and V. L. Cunningham, Green Chem., 2002, 4, 521.