Green Chemistry: Green Chemistry is an area of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering focussed on the designing of products and processes that minimize the use and generation of hazardous substances. It is also known as Sustainable Chemistry.
Green Chemistry was proposed in 1990 to control environmental pollution. According to Green Chemistry, the use of such chemicals, reactants, solvents etc. should be encouraged which are not hazardous to human beings.
Contributions of Green Chemistry in Prevention of pollution: Green Chemistry is the Philosophy of Chemistry whose aim is to modify present practices in order to prevent problems in the future. It plays an important role in prevention of pollution.
Some strategies of Green Chemistry which can be adopted are :
- Optimisation of balance of global mass in order to minimize waste.
- Minimisation of energy consumption, eg. designing process at ambient temperature and pressure.
- Wherever possible replacement of old compounds with others which maintain their functional efficiency while minimizing their toxic impact on the environment and human health.
- Some aqueous and non-aqueous solvents should be developed which are not harmful for human being and also do not cause environmental pollution.
- Use of biodiesel and hydrogen in vehicles should be encourged.
- To release the minimum amount of wastes.
Green chemistry is a new field but it has significant achievement in control of pollution. By using green chemistry we can prepare a prototype of any chemical reaction and can study the used chemical and properties of products.
When a chemical reaction is carried out in ultraviolet light, Sound wave and microwave then use get positive output. Nowadays enzymes is used as catalyst in the manufacturing of antibiotics. Some organic solvent is formed by using green chemistry that are harmful to human health nor the cause of pollution.
SO2 can be reduced to sulphur by using green chemistry, so that air pollution can be reduced.
SO2 gas can be absorbed by using limestone
2CaCO3 + 2SO2 + O2 ➝ 2CaSO4 + 2CO2
In green chemistry zeolite based detergent is used which reduces polution. Now CO2 is used for packing of foam sheet in place of chlorofluro carbon.
Similarly research are carried out to use helium in place of petrol and disel to stop of pollution caused by moter vehicle.
Various method to produce agriculture chemicals is discovered in which we can use poisonous material like cynide, formaldehyde etc.
