Atom economy refers to the careful tracking of which atoms are used and which are wasted in chemical processes (man made ones in particular). The reagents of the 'formula', utilized, unutilized and weight of both make up a graph in order to measure the efficiency of a reaction.
Elimination and substitution reactions are the least favorable reactions because they have the poorest atom economy. The most favorable are addition and rearrangement reactions.
I was reminded of how crazy, brilliant and frightening humans can be when I read about rearrangement reactions....rearranging atoms? what?!
A company has been working on improving atom economy of ibuprofren production and it looks like the graph states it is at %77 which I think means only %23 is wasted.
1 comment:
I had a really hard time following this article too, but I really like the way that you described it.
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