Nanoscience revolusionizing Green Chemistry? ft. Julio Terra

In Other Words

A not-yet-published project (from his master’s) showing catalytic chemistry runs very differently inside nanoscale mesoporous ‘straws’, e.g. hydrogen formed and consumed in the same confined nanosphere so it can’t escape.

Key Takeaways

Catalysis sits in almost every chemical product, so small tweaks to a catalyst change a whole process, less energy, higher selectivity, less waste; this is the lever green chemistry pulls.
Pharma is the worst offender (~90% waste, 10% product) because molecules need many low-yield steps, and most of that waste is solvent, which chemists routinely ignore.
Concrete wins: making rose-oxide fragrance (multi-ton scale) via a photochemical step (light is abundant and safer than heat), and making amines in one step that reincorporates fragments that would otherwise be waste (atom economy).
Heterogeneous catalysis (sand-in-water, not salt-in-water) lets you filter or settle out scarce, toxic metal catalysts so they don’t end up in the product.
Confinement effect: molecules in spaces near their own size constantly hit the walls and each other and so react differently, he trapped in-situ-generated hydrogen in tiny nanospheres so it’s consumed before it escapes, and wrote a COVID-lockdown review on using confinement to make chemistry greener.
The green-chemistry community is unusually tight-knit and welcoming, and courses/summer schools now exist where they didn’t in his undergrad; he came to chemistry wanting to teach and values science’s global, people-centred side. Three wishes: more LGBTQ, women and BIPOC people in STEM.