Tools for Green Chemistry & Engineering
The innovative green chemistry tools on this page have been developed by the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable and made available to the greater community. These tools are the unique output of the Roundtable’s collaboration among member companies and represent hundreds of hours of work.
Reagent Guide
The reagent guides purpose is to encourage chemists to choose a ‘greener’ choice of reaction conditions. The guides aim to achieve this by providing transparency through the use of Venn diagrams in addition to improving understanding by discussion and up to date references.
Solvent Selection Guide
Industry views solvent selection as a key component in the overall sustainability profile of a manufacturing process. In the pharmaceutical industry, around 50% of materials used to manufacture bulk active pharmaceutical ingredients are solvents. In addition, solvents contribute to about 80% of the process mass intensity (see presentation below for reference). For these reasons, the Pharmaceutical Roundtable developed a solvent selection guide based on health, safety, and environmental criteria.
Process Mass Intensity Calculator
Decreasing the overall quantity of materials used to create a product is a significant challenge for companies that green chemistry can address. In addition to environmental benefits, decreasing materials used saves companies money. The Process Mass Intensity (PMI) metric was developed as a way to benchmark and quantify improvements towards a greener manufacturing process. The PMI Calculator enables you to quickly determine the PMI value by accounting for the raw material inputs and bulk API outputs of a process.
Convergent Process Mass Intensity Calculator
In order to enhance the PMI calculator to accommodate convergent synthesis, the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable has released this 2.0 version. The Convergent PMI Calculator uses the same calculations, but allows multiple branches for single step or convergent synthesis. Instructions are included.
MedChem Tips and Tricks
In order to address approaches to greening medicinal chemistry the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable’s Medicinal Chemistry team produced this quick guide covering purification, solvents, reagents, energy and resources.