Reinventing the Chemical Industry
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book reviews a wide range of green chemistry. It is not a being widely promoted as alternative sol- revolutionary manifesto but rather a ‘practi- vents. Although these liquids are mentioned Reinventing the cal and rigorous’ collection of reviews with briefly in the context of phase-transfer references up to the end of 2000. The 23 chap- catalysis, they warrant a chapter of their chemical industry ters are the work of 28 authors from eight own. The book has an intriguing, abstract Handbook of Green Chemistry and different countries but, disappointingly, only photograph on the cover, but readers have to Technology four of them are from industry. The coverage wait until page 367 to discover that it is a edited by James Clark & Duncan is broad, with chapters on most key aspects of “view of sheared thin films in a spinning disc Macquarrie green chemistry, including catalysis, solvents, reactor”. This reactor is briefly covered in a Blackwell Publishing: 2002. 540pp. £149 reagents, life-cycle assessment and uncon- chapter on process intensification, which Martyn Poliakoff & Peter Licence ventional technologies such as ultrasound or involves making chemicals in small, high- microwaves for promoting reactions. throughput equipment — another subject Across the world, chemical manufacture is The chapter on ‘Hydrogen Peroxide in that deserved more space. The final chapter, unsustainable. Its petroleum-based feed- Waste Minimization’ quotes an industrial on the extraction of green products, ends stocks are dwindling and the problems and chemist who maintained that “almost all the with the intriguing statement that the cost of waste disposal are increasing rapidly. chemistry really used was at least 50 years extraction of green (unroasted) coffee beans Environmental legislation is becoming ever old”. This is a key problem of green chemistry. with superheated water “produced a brown more restrictive, and the industry has a poor Often, what is new is the way that reactions liquid with the aroma of coffee”. public image. But modern society is almost are used, rather than the reactions them- Overall, the book is a useful resource for totally reliant on the products of the chemical selves. The most enlightening chapters are those working in the area; it is not a guide for industry, and rising living standards in devel- those such as ‘Waste Minimization in Phar- the novice green chemist. But it does show oping countries are increasing demand. We maceutical Process Development’, in which that there is more to green chemistry than cannot just stop making chemicals. How then particular examples explain the logic and merely using hydrogen peroxide to bleach is chemical manufacturing to be transformed science behind cleaner chemistry. Other your waste water so that people do not notice into a sustainable, non-polluting activity chapters fail to highlight the ‘green’ aspects when you pour it into a river. I before the price of oil becomes prohibitive? of their topic and are little more than con- Martyn Poliakoff and Peter Licence are at the ‘Green chemistry’ (see Nature 413, 257; venient summaries of catalysis or technology. School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, 2001) is a relatively new approach to resolv- The chapter on ‘Green Chemistry in Practice’ Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. ing this impasse by removing the hazards of is the only one to tackle the problems of chemical usage through the design of safer non-petroleum feedstocks in any detail. manufacturing processes and safer chemi- Processing such feedstocks is an area in which cals. It aims to achieve sustainability by biocatalysis is likely to have a major role, increasing the use of biologically derived, so it is disappointing to find biocatalysis dis- Setting the record renewable feedstocks and by minimizing cussed in only 21 pages, hardly more than waste. Such broad aims require a corre- are devoted in another chapter to the solid straight spondingly wide range of skills; consequently, catalysts from a single company. Rossiiskaya Nauchnaya green chemistry involves toxicology and life- There is a useful introduction to electro- Emigratsiya: Dvadtsat’ Portretov cycle assessment as well as chemistry and chemistry, albeit with an unnecessary overlap (The Russian Scientific process engineering. Reaching these goals with the chapter on fuel cells, and a succinct Emigration: Twenty Portraits) also demands unusually close collaboration description of the use of high-pressure edited by G. M. Bongard-Levin & between academia and industry. (supercritical) carbon dioxide as an environ- V. E. Zakharov The Handbook of Green Chemistry and mentally less harmful replacement for con- Editorial URSS, Moscow: 2001. 386pp. Technology is a multi-authored book that ventional solvents. Ionic liquids — salts that 18 euros aims to illustrate the state of the art across melt below room temperature — are also Valery N. Soyfer In 1564, the Russian prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbsky quit the service of Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV) and emigrated to Poland. An educated courtier, a military commander and later a historian and liter- ary figure, Kurbsky was highly regarded by the Polish king Sigismund II Augustus. From 1564 to 1579, Kurbsky and Ivan the Terrible corresponded: Kurbsky accused C. FREEMAN/BIOSYM TECHNOLOGIES/SPL the tsar of cruelty and tried to explain to him why he preferred voluntary exile over ordeals and possible death, while the tsar accused him of betraying the motherland and of anti-Russian attitudes. Such animosity endured in Russia towards those who abandoned their coun- try, reaching a peak during the Soviet period. After the 1917 revolution, nearly 2 million educated and talented Russians emigrated to the West. The names of many Russian émigrés have entered the history of the twen- Green chemistry: zeolite minerals provide an environmentally friendly route to refining petroleum. tieth century, including Vladimir Zworykin, 880 © 2002 Nature Publishing Group NATURE | VOL 419 | 31 OCTOBER 2002 | www.nature.com/nature book reviews the inventor of television; Igor Sikorsky, the creator of the helicopter; and the composers Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov and Nikolai Metner. But the communist rulers did not recognize that these people were bringing glory not only to the countries that gave them shelter, but also to their mother- land. The émigrés were slandered and declared to be traitors and enemies. When, in the 1920s and 1930s, several leading scientists did not return to the USSR after travelling abroad, they began to be persecuted. The communists applied a harsh strategy to the most eminent scientists: elected members of the Russian (or Soviet) Academy of Sciences who emigrated were excluded from the list of members. This hap- pened to the historian Mikhail Rostovtsev in 1927, and to the chemists Alexei E. Chichibabin and Vladimir N. Ipatiev later. Their names and those of the great majority of Russian émigrés were struck from the memory of Russians for nearly half a century. However, a remarkable book has now been published in Russia on the lives and affairs of 20 of the most important Russian The eye of the beholder scientific émigrés who achieved worldwide Much of the world around us cannot be seen by techniques. In Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the renown not in their homeland, but in exile. the naked eye — we need techniques such as Naked Eye (Phaidon, £29.95, $49.95, 49.95 euros), Most of the protagonists of this book shared scanning electron microscopy or satellite imaging. David Malin has compiled a stunning collection similar fates. They began in their new envi- For instance, the fine detail shown here of the of images, which without such techniques would ronments with difficulty, and none expected coiled shell of the tun (Tonna galea), a marine be lost to us, of objects ranging in size from a tiny a warm reception. But possessing enormous carnivore, was obtained using false-colour X-ray gold atom to galaxies billions of light years away. creative potential and unusual strength of character, they made their way to the peak of the scientific Olympus in the West. on. Once there, Struve began to use spectral to three fundamental scientific fields of the A number of Russian scientists went to methods in astronomy, pioneering work in twentieth century: physics (he discovered America, among them the astronomer Otto several directions, especially in stellar spec- the quantum nature of a-decay), cosmology Lyudvigovich Struve. Struve graduated from troscopy (using absorption lines). He also (he created the theory of a hot Universe, and university in Russia in 1914. He fought in the discovered interstellar calcium and hydro- on the basis of that he predicted the existence White Army against the Bolsheviks but was gen. He became director of the Yerkes Obser- of the Big Bang) and genetics (he guessed seriously wounded and escaped to the West. vatory before heading the new Leuschner the essential nature of the universal genetic His uncle, Paul Gutnik of the Babelsberg Observatory in Berkeley, California. code). Gamow and his wife were allowed to Observatory in Berlin, wrote to the director The physicist Georgiy Antonovich leave Russia for two weeks in 1933 to attend of the Yerkes Observatory at the University of Gamow became a well known and colourful a Solvay Congress on physics, but never Chicago, encouraging him to take his nephew figure in world science. Gamow contributed returned. At that time, failure to return to the USSR was regarded by the Soviet authorities as espionage, betrayal of the motherland, and conspiracy with the goal of seizing power. The death penalty was prescribed for such NAUKA I ZHIZN NAUKA actions (this statute was removed in Russia only in 1995). Thus, Gamow would often tell acquaintances in America: “I am living under a sentence of death.” The physical chemist Georgiy Kistya- kovsky was a professor at Harvard University and also worked on the Manhattan Project to create the American atomic bomb.