One of my recent bugaboos has been the increase in the number of papers claiming a “green” synthesis, reagent, process or solvent. It seems that I am not alone in my concerns of the misuse of words such as “green” and “sustainable” based on a recent paper called ‘What does it mean that “something is

Tert-butyl phenols are important commodity chemicals, with annual production exceeding 120,000 t per annum. They have multiple industrial applications including agrochemicals, antioxidants- in particular 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4- methylphenol (BHT, Figure 1), foods, flavours and fragrances and pharmaceuticals.1 BHT in particular, used as an antioxidant in polymers and oils and prepared by reaction of p-cresol with isobutylene in

A number of years ago, during a scale-up campaign, I worked to try and convert a relatively simple, high-yielding Suzuki coupling from a relatively standard set of homogeneous coupling conditions to heterogeneous conditions using a palladium on carbon (Pd/C) catalyst. The reason for making the change was that although the homogeneous conditions worked very well,

The Scientific Update Ltd team recently worked with an amazing group of women to run the first ‘Empowering Women In Organic Chemistry Europe‘ Conference and it was fantastic to read all the positive reviews after the event. It was such an enriching and rewarding day full of positivity. Everyone who participated was totally open and