Themed collection Green Chemistry Reviews

Solid-phase extraction offers numerous advantages for critical materials recovery, and research in the field would benefit from increased focus on environmental impact, techno-economic assessments, and process scalability with real-world resources.

The innovational strategies to design P-containing catalysts with enhanced photo-/electro-catalytic water splitting activity are reviewed with respect to phase modifying, foreign elements introducing, morphology tailoring and interface engineering.

This Perspective discusses the evolution and promise of the emerging application of ionic liquids for renewable thermal energy storage.

The race to decarbonize our energy systems has led to significant advancement in technologies for harvesting renewable energy, carbon capture and conversion.

Biorefinery is the ideal model to help marine industries to apply green and blue economy principles towards a more sustainable, profitable, and conscious ocean economy.

This perspective reviews the current status and prospects of biocatalysis in ionic liquids.

A state-of-the-art review on anode valorization reactions to improve the economic viability and scalability of water or CO₂ electrolysis.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) constitute a significant and growing global market; renewables are an increasingly important source of their starting materials.

Primary furan platform chemicals are attractive reactants for the production of fuels and polymers. This perspective shows that they are economic starting materials in the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of numerous chemicals of varying complexity.

The optimization phase within API discovery is suitable for environmental considerations through Benign by Design. Pharmacological parameters are not necessarily in conflict with environmental biodegradability as an additional parameter.

Organoselenium-catalyzed reactions of carbonyl derivatives can produce may useful compounds under mild and green conditions. This article aims to summarize the recent advances and give a perspective from both green chemistry and safety viewpoint.

The valorization of polymeric wastes via depolymerization and simultaneous or subsequent catalytic treatment has gained enormous momentum. The goal of this paper is to do a virtuous circle between the subfields of model and real feedstock.

The enormous dimensions of sustainable energy transitions and their overarching systemic nature require adequate responses from chemical science.

Central role of future professionals in chemistry to promote alternatives towards sustainability.

Direct catalytic insertion of carbon monoxide in chemicals poses the challenge of controlling both the σ-bond activation and the subsequent carbonylation.

The fundamental insights into the relationships among the electronic properties of active metals, the binding strengths of key intermediates, and the CO₂ hydrogenation selectivity are provided.

Circular economy approach for various agrowaste-based bioplastic and biocomposite systems with potential applications in the protection of food products and extension of their shelf life.

This review is dedicated to investigating the catalytic properties and mechanism of single and multi-metals in biomass pyrolysis.

A comprehensive review of the synthesis and applications of Cu and Cu-based nanomaterials. A variety of applications including organic reactions, photocatalysis, environmental remediation, and sensors have been included.

Developing more efficient and greener catalytic strategies for upgrading biomass to value-added chemicals and fuels is crucial for a more sustainable future. Recently, single-atom catalysts have played an important role in this mission.

In this review, we aim to summarize strategies for achieving the polymerization–depolymerization cycle to access chemically recyclable polymers and highlight the current studies in this rapidly growing and promising area.

The present review aims to discuss strategies that have been recently explored by researchers to improve the yield of DMC in its direct synthesis from CO₂ and methanol.

A comprehensive summary of recent research progress applying immobilization technology in sustainable development of marine biomass to value-added products.

This review addresses advances and challenges in the chemical recovery of waste unsaturated polyester resins, presents a new strategy of reconstruction-oriented recovery, and gives promising prospects on the recovery of the wastes.

This article reviews 3D porous biomass-derived carbon materials as microwave absorbers, including their biomass sources, the transformation from biomass to porous carbon, and their corresponding microwave absorption applications and mechanism.

The sustainable synthesis of photoluminescent quantum dots (QDs) and their formation mechanisms, advantages, and limitations are discussed. The remaining challenges and future prospects of sustainable synthetic strategies are summarized.

Critical review for the recent developments of polymer membranes using non-toxic solvents and materials based on the green chemistry principle.

Conversions of chitosan, chitin, and crustacean shells to high value-added chemicals using acidic ionic liquids (ILs) as catalysts have been reviewed, demonstrating the structural effect of marine biomass on their conversion.

The research works on preparation and application of biomass derived methyl levulinate were summarized. The problems, corresponding solutions, and future research directions in this field were proposed.

Bio-oils are an important part of the future energy composition.

This review provides the state of the art of bifunctionalization of unsaturated bonds in carboxylative cyclization with CO₂ and sheds light on its future development.

Functionalization with CO₂: This tutorial review is focused on various approaches developed so far for functionalization of unsaturated C–C & C–H bonds using CO₂ to achieve carboxylation, lactonization & lactamization by metal and metal free methods.

The homogeneous chemical modification of chitosan and chitin in alkali/urea solvents and their possible applications.

What are the most promising biobased PET replacements? Are they economically feasible? Are they sustainable? Industrially feasible? In the future, PET will certainly be replaced by more than one option, e.g., PEF, PTF, bio-PET, and PLA.

Chemicals, materials and fuels from oceanic biomass using new types of solvent systems, facilitating sustainable and eco-friendly blue-biorefineries.

This review summarizes the recent catalyst achievements in oxidative and non-oxidative dehydrogenation of ethanol, and analyzes the reaction mechanism over typical catalysts.

Recent developments in silicon anode binders derived from various biomass sources, with a focus on polymer properties and their effect on battery performance.

This review addresses the current literature on porous organic polymers (POPs) as a new class of metal free green heterogeneous catalysts.

Chemical and structural modification of carbon nitride for biomass photoreforming.

Reductive depolymerization allows the valorization of polyester, polycarbonate and polyamide waste in a wide variety of value-added compounds with good yields

The 3D printing market is booming in various sectors coupled with an alarming increase in 3D printed plastic waste. This review summarizes sustainable advances in SLA/DLP plastic 3D printing to date and offers a perspective for further developments.

The state-of-the-art PGM-free ORR catalysts for PEMFCs, including their active sites, ORR and deactivation mechanisms are reviewed.

We provide a review of the progress of cross-dehydrogenative coupling reactions in constructing a wide variety of C–C bonds. Sustainable cross-dehydrogenative coupling reactions can be combined with multiple forms of energy output.

This review presents an overview of electrochemical product engineering towards critical metal recovery and manufacturing, looking at process optimization and product innovation aspects.

This review summarises the structural-compositional engineering of carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) for electrocatalytic and photocatalytic CO₂ reduction to chemicals and fuels experimentally and theoretically.

The entrapment of enzymes in organic, inorganic or biomaterials can yield active immobilized biocatalysts for chemical transformations without the need to form covalent bonds with the protein.

Development of active materials in aqueous organic redox flow battery contributes to the aspect of green technology. The ‘greenness’ of synthetic methodologies for preparing active materials are evaluated using the 12 principles of green chemistry.

Lignin is a natural UV-blocking material owing to its aromatic structure with numerous phenolic, ketone, and intramolecular hydrogen bonds. To produce high-performance and applicable sunscreen from lignin, various modification methods can be applied.

Click green chemistry as an efficient functionalization and polymerization method of vegetable oils and their derivatives.

Amphiphiles obtained by microbial fermentation, known as biosurfactants or bioamphiphiles, are reviewed in terms of their solution experimental and theoretical self-assembly properties, interface properties and interactions with macromolecules.

This review presents an overview of the transformation of biomass-derived platform chemicals into value-added chemicals and biofuels using metal phosphate-based heterogeneous catalysts.

This review presents the recent progress of the photocatalytic conversion of CH₄ to CH₃OH from four aspects: photocatalysts, oxidants, sacrificial reagents, and CH₄ activation mechanisms, along with its current status and existing challenges.

Cellulose building blocks can be assembled into lightweight materials with properties tailored by the density and the morphology.

It's not only lipases which can be applied in alternative solvent systems to meet industrial and environmental demands. At the hand of case studies and flowcharts this review quickly shows what solvent systems are viable.

The development of Cu-based photocathodes plays a critical role in in the realm of PEC CO₂ reduction, especially for the formation of C₂ products.

This review addresses advancements and challenges in the use of electrochemical methods as a means of upgrading lignin-derived model compounds to value-added products.

This review summarizes recent advances in developing sputtered nanomaterials as catalysts for energy electrocatalysis. In-depth insights into architecture/compositional design, synthesis, mechanism, and performance are provided.

This review discusses the use of flow chemistry as versatile tool for the synthesis and derivatisation of privileged scaffolds, looking at applicability, diversity-oriented synthesis options, inherent sustainability and green chemistry aspects.

From the fusion of bio- and chemocatalysts, immobilized in innovative materials, a new family of catalysts is emerging: multi-catalytic hybrid materials (MCHMs). It offers atom and energy savings and, above all, new prospects in chemical synthesis.

One-pot tandem procedures represent a green and general approach towards process intensification as they are intrinsically simpler compared to the conventional stepwise processes, do not require intermediate isolation and are generally more efficient.

This article systematically describes chemical reactions in biomass HTL and the catalytic hydrogenation upgrading of the obtained biocrude and analyze the effects of operating parameters on these two processes, such as reaction temperature, residence time and catalyst type.

The recent advances made in the catalytic preparation of biobased cyclic carbonates derived from sugars, glycerol, fatty acids/vegetable oils and terpenes are presented, together with a discussion surrounding their potential applications.

This review summarizes the reactions, catalysts and influence factors in the hydrothermal deoxygenation of lipids and fatty acids to diesel-like hydrocarbons.

Catalytic transfer hydrogenation/hydrogenolysis can valorize renewable compounds derived from biomass. Different catalysts have the ability to transfer hydrogen from hydrogen-donor molecules thereby avoiding the use of hazardous gaseous hydrogen.

Biomolecule-assisted synthesis of biomimetic nanocomposite hydrogels reduces the environmental impact and has potential applications in hemostasis and wound healing.

Water is a green reaction medium, while visible light represents a renewable, clean, and abundant energy source. The recent advances in visible-light-mediated organic transformations in water are summarized.

The recently developed strategies for the degradation and functionalization of lignin enable it to be converted into a wide variety of value-added -chemicals, -and advanced materials.

Stereocomplex polylactide with physical crosslinking crystallites, empowering polylactide based materials with advanced performances and opening new opportunities for applications.

This critical review chronologically summarizes the metal-free coupling methodologies of C(sp³)–H sources with heteroarenes induced by visible light. The articles which are published up to January 2022 on this topic are enclosed here.

A multiscale approach to sustainability was selected to analyse lignocellulose uses and availability with a focus on biomass growth, paper, insulation, construction wood, information and communication technologies, and biobased textiles.