Evaluation of two organic laboratory experiments according to the principles of green chemistry

Abstract

A new trend in chemical education incorporates green chemistry practices into laboratory courses as evidenced by the Green Organic Chemistry course taught by Kenneth Doxee and James Hutchison at the University of Oregon. We sought to compare an experiment from the Doxee and Hutchison’s Green Organic Chemistry lab manual to an experiment currently done in Sewanee’s Organic Chemistry course. We performed the aldol reactions from each organic laboratory manual and evaluated these reactions based on the principles of green chemistry accepted by the US EPA and the American Chemical Society.