Desk Flotsam: "Greenness" of Solvents
As a new process chemist, I wasn't always up to date on what's considered a "No-Go" solvent and which ones are desirable for industrial processes. I work on some continuous improvement projects where this comes up and at one point, I came across this paper discussing how solvent selection should be performed. Of this paper, I have combined the most relevant tables and have them Frankensteined together hanging behind my monitors. These list the conclusions Pfizer, GSK and Sanofi have made regarding the use of these solvents. I find that these 3 tables cover most of the solvents I encounter in my day-to-day work. The last table lists issues with solvents beyond just giving them a ranking, which I've used before in discussions.These are intended for use by medicinal chemists, but these rankings largely hold even on scale up, in my experience!
The actual Frankentable I have printed is below.