• skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    Acetone is rather green (7 in GSK solvent guide), but I for one haven’t used heavy metal catalysts in a year, and more if you don’t count palladium

    • ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Depends what is meant by green. Acetone is decent for health and safety (flammability notwithstanding) but is produced from petrochemicals and tied to the production of phenol (petroleum -> benzene and propane (or natural gas -> propane), propane -> propylene, benzene + propylene -> cumene, cumene + O2 -> phenol + acetone). Not much chlorophyll involved. Also has somewhere between a moderate to obscene CO2 burden depending on how you draw that box in and around the oil industry, but so do most commodity chemicals.

      I for one haven’t used heavy metal catalysts in a year

      Maybe not directly, but a lot of commodity chemicals rely on some truly vile metal mixtures for catalysis :)