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I recently attended a workshop on green chemistry and shared with them this great web resource. My question to the group is how many of us incorporate green chemistry into our curriculum? In what ways is green chemistry incorporated, through lecture, lab or both? What sort of resources are people using for this? I plan to post some information from the workshop on the viper site when I have time. I am interested to see how many of us are teaching this to our students.
I introduce the concepts in my second lab in General Chemistry I and I teach a course titled Sustainable and Green Chemistry. This course is an offering in what we call the COR, the centerpiece of Edgewood College's General Education. It is a mid career course in COR. I also teach a capstone course called Ethics and Responsibility in Scientific Research in the COR program.
Green chemistry isn't systematically taught in our general chemistry sequence or in the chemistry major at this point. I can think of one experiment in the sophomore lab year that mentions that the transformation being done is green. It is definitely a worthy topic. To give undergraduates a sense of how important green solvents, atom economy, etc. can be, it would be best to couple it with material on large-scale chemical processes. In my experience, covering industrial/process chemistry explicitly is rather rare. But it is at these very large scales where the impact of the green-ness of a synthesis can become more obvious.
Looking forward to seeing posts from the green chemistry workshop here!
Hi Abby,
I don't see the link to the resource you are talking about, can you post the address? Thanks!
-Kyle
Abby,
We have a handful of labs that mention it, but we currently do not cover it in lecture. We have been talking about extending out coverage, but we cannot agree on the appropriate way to do so.
Hi Kyle,
I didn't have a web resource for green chemistry, but was saying that I introduced this green chemistry group to the ionic viper community. Once I have time I will post stuff that we have done at TCNJ.
Aha, I read it backwards! Clearly I have not been drinking enough coffee.
I look forward to hearing what you have done at TCNJ!
We have a couple of green chemistry experiments in our organic lab and I do one green inorganic synthesis lab in our Integrated lab sequence. We make group VI metal carbonyl complexes in a biphasic reaction with a Phase transfer catalyst in the microwave. I have submitted this lab to J. Chem. Educ., but it is still under review.
I talk briefly about green chemistry in a first day lecture in Inorganic chemistry lecture I.
kurt
We recently published a Cu/TEMPO catalyzed aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohols for our main organic lab which could be used directly in an inorganic lab course. The green aspects of this lab are the replacement of the traditional Mn- and Cr-based oxidizing agents with catalytic amounts of CuBr and TEMPO that enable air to be used as the terminal oxidant. The lab also encourages discussion of transition metal catalysis. There are plenty of color changes during the procedure so it is popular with students!
See J. Chem. Educ. 2013, 90, 102-105.
If you are interested in green chemistry, this EPA list from their Design for the Environment program may be of interest.
It is a safer chemcal Ingredient list. It includes Chelating agents, solvents, surfactants etc.
http://www.epa.gov/dfe/saferingredients.htm
Kurt
Hi,
DePaul University has incorporated Green chemistry in their Organic Chemistry Laboratory. They published a few J Chem. Ed. papers on it (before my time here):
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed083p270
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed200256w
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed2000878
Hi All,
I am responding to this older post in the hopes to drum up some inogranic chemists that want to or are incorportating green chemistry into their inorganic courses, both lecture and lab settings. If you are interested in learning more about implementation of green chemistry or have advice, resouces, etc. to share you can respond here or reach out to me via email (natalie_oneil@beyondbenign.org).
Before joining Beyond Benign in June I was an inorganic chemistry faculty member at Utica College for 4 years and I brought green chemistry to everyclass setting I could, both major and nonmajor courses. From my view point the inoragnic field is missing greener procedures for lab when compared to fields like organic and anayltyical which is still lacking but is starting to make headway. I scaled down many reactions and choose greener solvents to make small steps, when I didn't have the time or resources for a total lab rehaul. I would be intersted to hear others experience in trying to green the inorganic lab.
Hope eveyone is having a great summer,
Natalie
Hi Natalie,
I recently tried to do a reaction in the microwave with a lot less solvent instead of a reflux with more solvent followed by a rotovap. We lucked out and the reaction worked at RT and the product crystallized beautifully and could be directly filtered! Much less solvent and energy input in isolation.
I'm always interested in finding "greener" methods in both teachng and research!
Kyle