Evaluation and Optimization of the Chemical Greenness of Copper Complex Synthesis

Abstract

This article reports a study, performed in educational context, to increase the greenness of the copper complex synthesis. Protocols from the literature were evaluated with the green star (GS) metric and new protocols, based on them, were designed to improve the overall greenness. They were tested in the laboratory and their greenness was evaluated by traditional greenness metrics and metrics inspired in industrial activity. The results showed that the decrease in the quantity of solvents exhibited the highest overall greenness when evaluated by mass metrics. However, when they were evaluated with the GS, there were no greenness improvements. This conflict denotes the complexity of the chemical green concept and the need to use different types of metrics when green assessment is a goal. The results showed that the inclusion of experiments in the copper complex synthesis in the educational laboratory is efficient in showing the difficulties of evaluating the greenness of chemistry and its implementation.