Greener and Safer Drug and Perfume Production: New Iron-Based Process

Traditional industrial processes in drug and perfume production can hurt the environment and be less than economical. Now, though, researchers have developed a series of techniques to create a variety of very active iron-based catalysts necessary to produce the alcohols and amines used in the drug and perfume industry. These new synthetic methods promise not only to be safer and more economical, but also more environmentally friendly.

"There is a research effort world-wide to make chemical processes more sustainable and green by replacing the rare, expensive and potentially toxic elements used in hydrogenation, catalytic converters in cars, fuels cells for the efficient conversion of chemical energy into electricity, and silicone coatings, with abundant ions such as iron," said Robert Morris, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Iron is about 10,000 times cheaper to obtain than ruthenium. And less than 200 metric tons of platinum-type metals are mined in the world every year; not all of it can be recycled after use, it is not essential to life and it can be toxic."

In fact, it's iron that helped the researchers develop the new techniques. Since iron is the fifth most abundant naturally occurring metal, the scientists used it as a substitute for the rare elements of ruthenium, rhodium, palladium and platinum. These rarer elements are what are traditionally used in the design of hydrogenation catalysts.

"We found a way to make the ferrous form of iron behave in a catalytic process much more efficiently than a previous metal," said Morris in a news release. "We did this by finding molecules containing nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon and hydrogen that bond to and enhance the reactivity of iron."

In the end, the researchers produced varieties of alcohol with different biological properties and different spells. These alcohols could be used both in flavor and drug synthesis as well as in perfumes. The findings could be crucial for changing both the drug and perfume industry and the way products are manufactured. The more environmentally friendly methods could pave the way for less hazardous waste in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Science.