Industrial Green Chemistry

Book excerpt: The editors and authors, with backgrounds in academia and industry, tie together recent and established technologies for the upcoming change to sustainable industrial chemistry. The extensive worldwide activities towards that goal are exemplified with a series of green processes. Some of these processes are already commercially applied (squalene to squalane, hydraulic fluids from vegetable oils, biosourced polycarbonates), others are ready for a large scale implementation (glycerol to acrylic acid, biosourced acrylonitrile and levulinic acid, polyamides from fatty nitriles-esters hydrogenation, butadiene from bioethanol) or are being developed (cyclic carbonates from epoxides, selective pyrolysis of biomass). This book is an indispensable source for the researchers and professionals who work for a greener chemical industry. The chapters have been arranged to guide students through the design of new processes for more sustainable chemistry, using case studies as examples.