A Survey of Solvent Selection Guides
Green chemistry tools to influence a medicinal chemistry and research chemistry based organization
Kim Alfonsi, Juan Colberg, Peter J. Dunn, Thomas Fevig, Sandra Jennings, Timothy A. Johnson, H. Peter Kleine, Craig Knight, Mark A. Nagy, David A. Perry and Mark Stefaniak. Green Chem., 2008, 10, 31-36
This is the same paper that you will find Pfizer's Solvent Selection Guide. In the second half of the paper the author's describe how they try to choose reagents for various organic transformations and suggest strategies for other researchers to do the same.
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A Convenient Guide To Help Select Replacement Solvents For Dichloromethane In Chromatography
Joshua P. Taygerly, Larry M. Miller, Alicia Yee and Emily A. Peterson, Green Chem., 2012,14, 3020-3025
One of the largest contributors to chlorinated solvent waste in medicinal chemistry is chromatography. A set of "drug-like" compounds was employed to compare the relative eluting strengths of greener solvent systems. Dis
closed herein is an experimentally-derived solvent selection guide to aid chemists in choosing greener solvents for chromatographic purification, with a particular focus on reducing dichloromethane usage.
Alternative Solvents: Shades of Green
James H. Clark and Stewart J. Tavener, Organic Process Research & Development 2007, 11, 149-155
The use of alternative reaction solvents is reviewed in terms of life cycle. Supercritical CO2, ionic liquids, fluorous solvents, water, and renewable organics are compared on the basis of their solvency, ease of use, reusability, health and safety, environmental impact, and economic cost.
What is a green solvent? A comprehensive framework for the environmental assessment of solvents
Christian Capello, Ulrich Fischer and Konrad Hungerbuhler, Green Chemistry, 2007,9, 927-934.
Solvents define a major part of the environmental performance of processes in chemical industry and also impact on cost, safety and health issues. The idea of "green" solvents expresses the goal to minimize the environmental impact resulting from the use of solvents in chemical production. Here the question is raised of how to measure how "green" a solvent is. We propose a comprehensive framework for the environmental assessment of solvents that covers major aspects of the environmental performance of solvents in chemical production, as well as important health and safety issues. The framework combines the assessment of substance-specific hazards with the quantification of emissions and resource use over the full life-cycle of a solvent. The proposed framework is demonstrated on 26 organic solvents. Results show that simple alcohols (methanol, ethanol) or alkanes (heptane, hexane) are environmentally preferable solvents, whereas the use of dioxane, acetonitrile, acids, formaldehyde, and tetrahydrofuran is not recommendable from an environmental perspective. Additionally, a case study is presented in which the framework is applied for the assessment of various alcohol-water or pure alcohol mixtures used for solvolysis of p-methoxybenzoyl chloride. The results of this case study indicate that methanol-water or ethanol-water mixtures are environmentally favourable compared to pure alcohol or propanol-water mixtures. The two applications demonstrate that the presented framework is a useful instrument to select green solvents or environmentally sound solvent mixtures for processes in chemical industry. The same framework can also be used for a comprehensive assessment of new solvent technologies as soon as the present lack of data can be overcome.
Searching For Green Solvents
Philip G. Jessop, Green Chem., 2011,13, 1391-1398
Academic research in the area of green solvents is focused on neither the industries that use solvents most nor the types of solvents that the research community believes have the best hope of reducing solvent-related environmental damage. Those of us who are primarily motivated by a desire to reduce such damage would do well to look at the major uses of solvents, to determine the problems that currently make those applications less-than-green and focus our research efforts on potential solutions to those problems. As a contribution to such efforts, I present four grand challenges in the field of green solvents: finding a sufficient range of green solvents, recognizing whether a solvent is actually green, finding an easily-removable polar aprotic solvent and eliminating distillation.
Sanofi's Solvent Selection Guide: A Step Toward More Sustainable Processes
Denis Prat, Olivier Pardigon, Hans-Wolfram Flemming, Sylvie Letestu, Véronique Ducandas, Pascal Isnard, Eberhard Guntrum, Thomas Senac, Stéphane Ruisseau, Paul Cruciani and Patrik Hosek Org. Process Res. Dev., 2013, 17, 1517-1525
Sanofi's solvent selection guide helps chemists in early development select sustainable solvents that will be accepted in all production sites. Solvents are divided into four classes, from 'recommended' to 'banned'. This ranking is derived from Safety, Health, Environmental, Quality, and Industrial constraints. Each solvent has its own ID card that indicates the overall ranking, H, S & E hazard bands, as well as its ICH limit, physical properties, cost, and substitution advice.