Hutchison, James E., Scott M. Reed, Robert D. Gilbertson, Marvin G. Warner, and Kenneth M. Doxsee. DEVELOPMENT OF GREEN EXPERIMENTS FOR AN INTRODUCTORY ORGANIC LABORATORY COURSE
Department of Chemistry, 1253 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 (hutch@oregon.uoregon.edu)
Green chemistry is growing in importance in academic and industrial research laboratories. Such chemistry has been slow to appear in teaching laboratories due, in part, to a lack of published material on this subject. We are developing experiments for use in a green organic chemistry course, and present here the methods by which we selected, tested and optimized experiments for this course. As an example, we present a laboratory experiment for the synthesis of adipic acid that was developed from the primary literature. This synthesis utilizes green reagents (hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant), solvents (water) and methods (phase transfer catalysis, catalyst recycling). It provides students a first hand example of environmentally benign synthesis by demonstrating reuse of a product, synthesis using a non-hazardous solvent, elimination of deleterious by-products, and use of a recyclable catalyst.