Green Chemistry and Paper

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Green Chemistry and Paper
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The job of green chemist

• Problem solver

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• The problem with office paper
• Produces toxic by-products
• Organochlorine by-products cause health problems
  in animals and humans
• Uses high temperature energy in the process

• to this ?

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Paper Facts

• World consumption of paper is 300 million tons
  per year
• Industrialized nations, with 20 percent of the
  worlds population, consume 87 percent of the
  worlds printing and writing papers. There are
  just over 10,000 paper mills worldwide
• In 1997 the total world paper and paperboard
  production was 299,044 metric tons. Or
  approximately 200,000 VW Bug cars in weight
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333
  sheets
• 10,000 paper mills are in operation world wide
• Paper use in offices has risen between 1990 and
  1999 4.8 percent

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Chlorine is used to make this paper

• Organochlorines are generally foreign to nature,
  they tend to be
• extremely toxic
• long living in the environment
• fat soluble

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Wood is composed of 30 lignins.Lignins are
what makes the wood brown
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Chemical Structure of Lignin
http//www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/images/lignin.
jpg
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Brown Paper

• Most of the lignin is removed using a chemical
  process but what is left can turn the paper brown
  if it is not bleached
• This is how you get brown paper bags
• But to get white office paper you need to bleach
  the remaining lignins

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TAML Oxidant activators

• In 1999 professor Terry Collins and Carnegie
  Mellon University won the Presidential Green
  Chemistry Award for TAML

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TAML Tetra-amido macrocyclic LigendHow does it
work?

• TAML activators act as a catalyst to make H2O2 a
  more efficient bleaching agent
• The TAML activator has a ligand structure that
  surrounds the iron
• TAML activates the hydrogen peroxide releasing
  free radicals (unpaired electrons) that destroy
  pigment.

http//www.cmu.edu/mcs/about-mcs/news/050307-taml.
html
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Has the problem been solved?

• Produces toxic by-products
• Only water and oxygen are formed as products
• Organochlorine by-products cause health problems
  in animals and humans
• TAML is free of toxic functional groups
• Uses high temperature energy in the process
• TAML has been shown to
• work at ambient temperatures
• and pressures

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Can you see any other applications for TAML
technology?