Industrial Green Chemistry Workshop » Chemicals

A drug to feminize males!!!

igcw — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:31:17 +0000

The rising population and the ever rising diseases and medicines invented for curing this will definitely increase the bioaccumulation of drugs in the environment. And what can it do to our mother nature? I think it would be much more perfect if I put the question the other way around. What it cannot do to the environment? Let’s find it out.

These drugs are not only harmful to the environment and the mankind, but also threaten the wildlife. Of course in weird ways. I was speechless for a minute when a researcher told me that a derivative of the hormone oestrogen can feminize a male fish!! The derivative, called ethinyl estradiol (EE2), is thought to be responsible for feminising male fish. Now, what more can you do to a male, does it really matter whether it’s a fish or a human being?

EE2 is the main active ingredient in many contraceptives and is excreted by women in a conjugated form, which can then be deconjugated in sewage treatment works and discharged in the activated state.

Numerous chemicals released in the process of drug making hold the potential to disrupt sexual development and reproduction in a diverse range of animal species by mimicking natural estrogens. And, most of these chemicals are found in waste water and ultimately will end up in rivers and other aquatic bodies. So, undoubtedly we can say that these aquatic organisms are therefore highly susceptible to the harmful effects of environmental estrogens.

It is actually shocking to know that drugs prepared for the wellness of mankind is actually destroying many other living beings and thereby the nature also. This particular case of EE2 tells us exactly how drugs discharged into the environment disrupt the normal endocrine function of wildlife.

Eying a greener pharma

igcw — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:40:09 +0000

We have been hearing about the concept of green chemistry and its 12 principles for quite a long time. But, seldom do we talk about the application of these principles and the wonderful concept in different industries. The pharmaceutical industry is cleaning up its act while improving its bottom line through green initiatives. Let’s have a small ride to the valleys of green pharma to experience the pharma industries’ green initiatives.

There is a lot of pressure evolving around the pharma industry worldwide as their block-buster drugs patent expires, lack of candidates to replace them, and especially the cost of discovering and developing drugs also increase. But green chemistry offers significant cost advantages and hence is a part of the solution to these problems. How ‘going green’ will reduce the cost? The savings come about because efficient syntheses that avoid exotic reagents, minimise energy use and replace organic solvents with water are invariably cheaper to perform.

But, how many are implementing these principles? The numbers are growing, but still need more participation.

The industry reports are actually a bit scary as it highlights the impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment. There is an immediate requirement of an action plan to be set up so as to increase understanding and improve risk management. The need for a greener solution is much more important when we see the steady growth of the pharma market worldwide.

Both human and veterinary medicines have the potential to harm environment. But how? The whole lot of toxic elements contained in these medicines will be coming through waste waters. Can we ever control the production of these medicines? No I guess. How can we control the production of medicines when population, and thereby health problems, is on a high. The more the number of people, the more the medicines – of different varieties, flavours, colours, complications, after-effects… where are we heading to? Green Chemistry and its wonderful concept of E-factor come to our rescue at this point. Why don’t we discuss that in another post as I am already too much “DRUGGED”?

Prevention by recycle at source

igcw — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:21:48 +0000

World over we are seeing discussions about green and green related issues. Chemical Industry is no exemption. There is a great need to develop and practice eco-friendly processes for manufacturing products avoiding chemical pollution and waste generation. When the chemical products are designed keeping in mind the principles of green chemistry and E-factor, the enormous amount of waste produced by the industry can be kept under control.

The relevance of E-factor should be recognized at the design stage itself for any product so that it comes in harmony with the green concept. E-factor helps develop new processes and chemical products without harming the environment. It stresses on design of safer, biodegradable and less hazardous useful chemical products utilizing atom economic and energy efficient processes.

High Volume Products generate huge quantities of waste like H-Acid, DASDA, Paracetamol, Phenylephrine, Pigment CPC, Violet23 and Pendimethylene, which are extremely deadly harmful to the mankind. The key is prevention, not control. It is important to ensure proper scale-up through appropriate mixing, reactor design and engineering to have uniformity over large-volume operation. This is where green engineering plays a critical role in prevention by recycle at source at industrial scale. Green Chemistry is taking an independent form as an amalgam of other chemical disciplines, especially organic, inorganic and biological chemistry.

Towards a sustainable enterprise

igcw — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:06:30 +0000

The fine chemicals and pharmaceutical companies have been aware that their manufacturing processes were generating waste in bulk in some form or the other. But these were unaddressed in the earlier days. It is a known fact that the absolute amount of waste produced by these industries is much lower than that of the bulk chemicals industry. But that definitely is not a reason for not addressing the issue. Thanks to E-factor as it came and hit the chemical fraternities in the right time. E-Factor provided a very simple means of measuring one’s performance and has been adopted by the chemical industry world-wide for this purpose.

The enormity of the amount of waste produced and how it can be reduced before the production stage itself via the concept of E-factor was in a fact reduced their woes on waste generation during manufacturing. The concept of E-Factor challenged the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry to make a paradigm shift from a concept of process efficiency to one that is motivated by elimination of waste and maximisation of raw materials utilization.

In fact, the pharmaceutical industry in particular has made substantial progress in the past few years and has adopted the concept of E-Factor as its measuring staff. The impact of E-Factor is not restricted to the fine chemicals industry, it has wider and more complicated uses in the other sectors also and has played as a major role as a measure of the efficiency of the chemical industry. Hopefully the concept of E-factor will continue to do so as the chemical industry progresses towards being a sustainable enterprise.

Vote for E-factor

igcw — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:23:11 +0000

In the early 1980s, the world’s chemical fraternities’ attention was drawn to DSM Fine Chemicals. No, it’s not because of the sudden surge in the stock market or a new range of products. The phloroglucinol plant at Oce´ Andeno gained much attention because the cost of disposing of the waste was rapidly approaching the selling price of the product and company was forced to close its plant. It was in the wake of this issue that Roger A Sheldon, Professor of Biocatalysis and Organic Chemistry at Delft University of Technology had developed the concept of E-factor in the early 1980s. Interestingly, the concept of green chemistry was being formulated at about the same time by Anastas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address the environmental issues of both chemical products and the processes by which they are produced.

Green chemistry efficiently utilises (preferably renewable) raw materials (includes the source of energy), eliminates waste and avoids the use of toxic and/or hazardous reagents and solvents in the manufacture and application of chemical products. Green chemistry eliminates waste at source, i.e., it is primary pollution prevention rather than waste remediation. Green Chemistry is the utilization of a set of principles that reduces or eliminates the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture and application of chemical products. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been created. So says the first principle of Green chemistry; the E-factor.

E factor is the actual amount of waste produced in the process, defined as everything but the desired product. It takes the chemical yield into account and includes reagents, solvent losses, all process aids and, in principle, even fuel (although this is often difficult to quantify). Higher E-factor means more waste and, consequently, greater negative environmental impact. The ideal E factor is zero. It can be easily calculated from knowledge of the number of tons of raw materials purchased and the number of tons of product sold, for a particular product or a production site or even a whole company. But surprisingly many of the companies are not aware of this concept which was developed in the early 80s.

Now, it’s time for the chemical fraternity to come forward and vote for E-factor!

The Goal is Zero

igcw — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:36:35 +0000

Everyone in the chemical fraternity, especially the pharmaceutical industry, is talking about Green chemistry and its allied principles. Now, what exactly is this Green Chemistry? Green Chemistry, to put in simple ways, is the science of inventing sustainable products and processes to create safe, non-toxic materials for sustainable society. Green Chemistry focuses on innovation and creativity through chemistry.

So how can one determine if one method of making a product is better than the other? There are a number of ways to determine this and one such metric is called the E-factor or the Environmental Impact Factor. E-Factor is the measure of the waste generated while making a particular product. Lower the E-factor, lesser the waste produced. E-factor is a measure of the quantity of waste produced in making a product, compared to the amount of useful material obtained (the product). The E-factor calculation is defined by the ratio of the mass of waste per unit of product:

E-Factor = Total Waste (kg) / Product (kg)

The concept of E-factor has been there for more than fifteen years, which played a major role in focusing the attention of the chemical industry word-wide, on the problem of waste generation in chemicals manufacture. Dated back in 1980s the concept still provides the impetus for developing cleaner and more sustainable processes.

The principles of Green Chemistry direct us to reduce waste rather than dealing with it after creating waste. As we all know, it is always better when zero waste is produced. All the materials that were used initially for the manufacturing of a product should be used in the final product or they should be recycled. In this case the E-factor is zero – “The Goal is Zero”.