Chemical synthesis has its by-products, and the waste is not easy to handle. To assist chemists in finding less wasteful synthetic procedures, a group of members of the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute have developed a web app called “PMI Prediction Calculator“.
PMI stands for Process Mass Intensity (the ratio of the mass of materials used in a reaction to the mass of the products) and is used as a measure of efficiency for a reaction.
Based on a database of some 2000 commonly-used reactions, the app calculates the PMI and related uncertainty for each synthetic step and for the whole process, as described by the user.
Chemists can therefore have a rough estimate of the efficiency of different synthetic options they can use, before implementing them in the laboratory.
The creators of the app expect that it can not only be used to benchmark the outcome performance of synthetic procedures, but also to support green-by-design chemical synthesis and reduce environmental impacts of pharmaceutical industries.
