Louis Diorazio and co-workers at AstraZeneca recently published an article entitled “Toward a More Holistic Framework for Solvent Selection”, which describes the development of a solvent selection tool. Most solvent guides concentrate on Health and Environmental aspects of solvents, but where this new solvent selection tool differs is that it takes in to account issues that affect the success (conversion, selectivity and so on) of the reaction. It’s all very well to have a perfect “green” solvent but if your reaction doesn’t work it’s of no use, so this solvent guide is of much more use to chemists in the lab, and allows an informed choice of solvent rather than just your favourite solvent or whichever solvent happens to be closest at hand.
L. Diorazio, D.R.J. Hose, and N.K. Adlington, Org. Proc. Res. Dev., 2016, 20, 760-773.
