Green Chromatography: The Heart of Sustainability and Efficiency in Pharmaceutical and Drug Analysis

Green Gas Chromatography for the Analysis of Small-molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients

Green chemistry has been receiving increased attention in recent years across the breadth chemistry and related science and engineering disciplines, and analytical chemistry is no exception. There is renewed interest in developing analytical methods and techniques that consume fewer solvents and materials, use smaller, less power and space intensive instruments and involve reduced cost and manpower. Interestingly, such conversations can be traced back for decades, well prior to the coining of the term “green chemistry” in the 1990s. In this seminar, we will discuss the basic principles of green chemistry, their origin in the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with a surprise analytical chemistry connection. We will fast forward to the 2020s, with examples of green analytical chemistry rooted in the fundamental principles of analytical method development using gas chromatography and related sample preparation techniques as examples and we will see how gas chromatography, with potential for simplified sample preparation, reduced solvent usage, rapid analysis and lower power consumption instrumentation can be a green alternative to high performance liquid chromatography in the pharmaceutical analysis of example small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients.