Sakil Islam / Chemistry & Biochemistry / Faculty Mentor: Daniel Armstrong
Drug discovery and impurity analysis in pharmaceutical industries are critical for human health. Most of these processes involve thousands of liters of solvents causing a major burden on the environment. In recent years, significant strides have been made in green analytical chemistry, particularly in making separation processes greener. The widespread use of toxic solvents like acetonitrile (ACN) and hexane in liquid chromatography (LC) has raised concerns over environmental impact and safety. This study explores unconventional carbonate ester solvents, including dimethyl carbonate (DMC), diethyl carbonate (DEC), and propylene carbonate (PPC), as green alternatives to traditional toxic solvents. Comprehensive solvatochromic and chromatographic studies have been done on DMC, PPC, and DEC. This research evaluates the solvent polarity, UV cut-off, and chromatographic performance of these alternatives in normal-phase liquid chromatography (NPLC), reverse-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC), and mixed-mode chromatography (MMC). The findings suggest that DMC and PPC offer comparable elution strength, UV cut-off, selectivity, and chromatographic efficiency to other traditional solvents while reducing toxicity and environmental hazards, promoting more green and safer practices in analytical and preparative separations. Since these solvents are esters, we also investigate twenty-four-hour solvent stability studies. We were able to show that, in MMC and RPLC, up to 50% of ACN can be substituted by PPC, and 30% of ACN by DMC.
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