ARTICLEThis journal is ABSTRACT: A selection guide of common solvents has been elaborated, based on a survey of publically available solvent selection guides. In order to rank less classical solvents, a set of Safety, Health and Environment criteria is proposed, aligned with the Global Harmonized System (GHS) and European regulations. A methodology based on a simple combination of these criteria gives an overall preliminary ranking of any solvent. This enables in particular a simplified greenness evaluation of bio-derived solvents.

Driven by legislation and evolving attitudes towards environmental issues, establishing green solvents for extractions, separations, formulations and reaction chemistry has become an increasingly important area of research. Several general purpose solvent selection guides have now been published with the aim to reduce use of the most hazardous solvents. This review serves the purpose of explaining the role of these guides, highlighting their similarities and differences. How they can be used most effectively to enhance the greenness of chemical processes, particularly in laboratory organic synthesis and the pharmaceutical industry, is addressed in detail.

A unified metrics toolkit has been developed to evaluate sustainability of reactions, encompassing a comprehensive and holistic range of criteria for measuring how green a reaction is, covering quantitative and qualitative criteria both upstream and downstream of the reaction itself.

Dihydrolevoglucosenone (Cyrene) is a bio-based molecule, derived in two simple steps from cellulose, which demonstrates significant promise as a dipolar aprotic solvent. The dipolarity of dihydrolevoglucosenone is similar to NMP, DMF and sulpholane. Dihydrolevoglucosenone demonstrates similar performance to NMP in a fluorination reaction and the Menschutkin reaction.

The synthetic strategies towards thiosulfonates (RSO2SR1) are comprehensively reviewed from their original discovery to recent advances. Incorporation of the green credentials of the synthetic procedures towards thiosulfonates allows one to judge the merits of the state of the art, beyond the typical yield of a product and availability of the reactants. As reactant for organic transformations, thiosulfonates are particularly interesting given their possibility to react with nucleophiles, electrophiles and radicals. This review aims to give researchers, not familiar with the field, a good understanding of the general applications of thiosulfonates, while not skipping the recent important advances. The related, but less explored, selenosulfonates (RSO2SeR1) are also covered.

This literature review covers the solubility and processability of fluoropolymer polyvinylidine fluoride (PVDF). Fluoropolymers consist of a carbon backbone chain with multiple connected C–F bonds; they are typically nonreactive and nontoxic and have good thermal stability. Their processing, recycling and reuse are rapidly becoming more important to the circular economy as fluoropolymers find widespread application in diverse sectors including construction, automotive engineering and electronics. The partially fluorinated polymer PVDF is in strong demand in all of these areas; in addition to its desirable inertness, which is typical of most fluoropolymers, it also has a high dielectric constant and can be ferroelectric in some of its crystal phases. However, processing and reusing PVDF is a challenging task, and this is partly due to its limited solubility. This review begins with a discussion on the useful properties and applications of PVDF, followed by a discussion on the known solvents and diluents of PVDF and how it can be formed into membranes. Finally, we explore the limitations of PVDF’s chemical and thermal stability, with a discussion on conditions under which it can degrade. Our aim is to provide a condensed overview that will be of use to both chemists and engineers who need to work with PVDF.

Are the comparisons of PMI values fair and informative, are you making a like versus like assessment?

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