Future chemical technology development guide

Chemistry has a long history of creating many important high-quality products and processes, but it has also brought problems. For sustainable development, what characteristics and production processes of chemical products will society need in the future? It's worth thinking about.

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In January 2020, Professor Julie B. Zimmerman, Associate Director of the Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering; Paul T. Anastas, the father of green chemistry; and Hanno C. Rekpor, associate professor at Yale University. Erythropel and Walter Leitner, former editor-in-chief of the journal green chemistry, published their co-authored review, "Designing for a green chemistry future," in Science.

At the beginning of 2020, this digital year that seems to have a transformational significance for mankind, with the title of "Blueprint for the future of Green chemistry", profoundly describes the ideas and suggestions for the sustainable development of green chemistry, and puts forward the twelve principles of green chemistry, which have to be said to have profound meaning.

-- Professor Jiang Xuefeng of East China Normal University

In a sustainable society, the material base depends to a large extent on chemical products and their production processes, which are designed according to the principle of "good for people's lives". The inherent properties of molecules can be considered from the earliest stage (i.e. the design stage) to solve problems such as repeatability, risk and stability of products and processes. The chemical products, raw materials and manufacturing processes of the future need to integrate green chemistry and green engineering into the concept of sustainable development. This transformation requires advanced technology and innovation, as well as systems thinking and system design that starts at the micro molecular level and has a positive impact on a global scale.

When designing for the planet of the future, the scientific question facing the field of chemistry is no longer whether chemical products are necessary, but what characteristics and processes of chemical products are required for a sustainable society?

Chemistry has a long history of creating many important high quality products and processes. The current chemical industry is a production chain that relies on raw materials, which are mainly limited fossil resources in nature. These reactants are often highly reactive and toxic, often resulting in accidental leakage, resulting in poisoning of workers (such as the methyl isocyanate leak in Bhopal, India; Dioxins have leaked in Times Beach, Missouri, USA, and Seveso, Italy).

At the same time, most manufacturing processes produce an even higher proportion of waste (often toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative) than expected products, especially when product complexity increases (e.g., specialty chemicals produce 5 to 50 times more waste than expected products, and pharmaceuticals 25 to 100 times more).

Target chemical products are often designed for their intended use to control the production environment to reduce the potential hazards of spills, and these hazards are often not assessed, possibly due to the lack of appropriate tools and models for a long time, as evidenced by numerous accidents.

Since chemical products continue to provide many conveniences to society, the design of chemical products in the future must contain two objectives:

One is how to maintain and improve performance,

The second is how to limit or eliminate harmful effects that threaten the sustainable development of human society.

Answering these questions is a serious scientific challenge.

A large number of scientific achievements in the field of green chemistry and green engineering show that chemical products and production processes can reduce the adverse impact on human society while realizing more functions. These successes are not hearsay, but need to be achieved through a systematic system of thinking.

In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to change not only the conditions and environment in which chemical products are produced and used, but also the inherent characteristics of chemical products and reagents themselves along the entire value chain, from raw materials to applications. This requires shifting the definition of "performance" from "function" to "function and sustainability," a goal that can only be achieved by grasping the intrinsic properties of molecules and their variations and designing them.

Design and innovation should be carried out in a comprehensive system framework

It is very challenging to pursue sustainable design improvements in complex systems using traditional simplification methods.

In the chemical industry, although the reductionist focus only on function can extend the life of chemical products to a certain extent, it may still exist in water after the end of life and be exposed to unprotected people.