Green chemistry

Did you know that ThalesNano’s products can also improve chemistry by complying with many of the principles of green chemistry? Below are a few examples of how we achieve that.

Waste prevention

The H-Cube® series with the CatCart® technology allows catalysts to be recycled and used with different substrates making the most out the Earth’s limited natural resources. When using catalysts in batch systems, the catalysts are filtered then disposed.

Less hazardous chemical syntheses

The instruments of ThalesNano reduce the risks associated with hazardous chemical syntheses. Specifically, the H-Cube® makes hydrogenation safer by removing the need for hydrogen cylinders and catalyst filtration.

Designing safer chemicals, solvents and auxiliaries

The H-Cube® series all use catalyst cartridges (CatCarts®) which allow the user to handle pyrophoric catalysts safely. When using batch reactors, catalyst filtration is required and is a hazardous step. With the CatCarts® this step is not necessary.

Energy efficiency

Utilizing flow methodology means that heating a reaction mixture to the desired temperature requires less energy because only a small amount of the reaction material is present at one time in the reactor. When moving to larger scales, this efficiency improves drastically.

Safer chemistry and accident prevention

With the removal of hydrogen cylinders and the catalyst filtering process coupled with closer temperature control of high energy reactions, our product line makes hazardous chemistry safer to perform and prevents accidents.

Reduce derivatives and synthesis steps

The ability to use previously inaccessible chemistries with our flow instruments means that routes can now be re-examined in order to reduce steps and save costs. High temperature chemistry allows chemists can to reduce catalyst or reagent stoichiometries. The H-Cube Autosampler™ system can shorten the number of synthetic steps in a library. For example, a nitro compound must be reduced to form an amine, which will act as a proton donor in the final compound. In batch processes, hydrogenation would be performed on a large scale at the beginning of the synthesis and the resulting amine protected and deprotected as the last step. The reduction of the nitro group as a last step in a library synthesis, negating the need for protection and deprotection steps, cannot be performed in a batch mode due to the large number of compounds involved. It would take too long time. With the H-Cube® Autosampler package, 50 compounds may be reduced overnight allowing this process to be performed in an automated fashion.