Green Chemistry Blog

A recent Green Chemistry article from Julie Zimmerman, Paul Anastas and co-workers from Yale University and Baylor University describes guidelines which should be followed in order to design chemicals with reduced aquatic toxicity.  Their article has been highlighted in Nature News.

The team highlight that there is a need for synthetic chemists to focus on design of safer chemicals rather than testing for toxicity after production.  The team explored mechanistically-driven qualitative and quantitative analyses between the in-silico predicted molecular properties and in vivo toxicity data to propose property limits associated with higher probabilities of safe chemicals.  They propose design guidelines that can be used to significantly increase the probability that a chemical will have low toxicity to the aquatic species studied. 

Interested in knowing more? Read the full article for free until September 1^st!

Towards rational molecular design: derivation of property guidelines for reduced acute aquatic toxicity
Adelina M. Voutchkova, Jakub Kostal, Justin B. Steinfeld, John W. Emerson, Bryan W. Brooks, Paul Anastas and Julie B. Zimmerman
Green Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1GC15651A

Pure vanillin can be recovered from fermentation media in a single, sustainable, solvent-free pervapouration step.

Vanillin is one of the world’s most important aroma compounds in the profitable market of flavours and fragrances. The majority of vanillin is produced chemically, with only a very small proportion extracted from beans. Vanillin can also be produced from fermentation processes, which have significantly lower production costs and give a high quality product.  However, vanillin produced by this method can only be described as ‘natural’ if its recovery from the fermentation media does not adversely affect the product quality.  This is an important characteristic as ‘natural’ vanillin has a much higher commercial price that synthetic vanillin.

In this work Crespo and co-workers have used an organophilic pervaporation method to recover vanillin from fermentation media.  This process involves a hydrophobic non-porous membrane in which hydrophobic solutes sorb very favourably to it, diffuse across the membrane and desorb under stimulus (e.g. changes in pressure).  This method avoids the use of organic solvents and contamination from adsorbents, and provided quantitative recovery of vanillin.

To find our more, just click the link below!  This article is free to access until 29th August!

Sustainable recovery of pure natural vanillin from fermentation media in a single pervaporation step, Carla Brazinha, Dalje S. Barbosa and João G. Crespo, Green Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C1GC15308K