What will it take to clean up our act?

When the key methods of analytical science were first developed, the goal was accurate, reliable, reproducible and cost-effective analysis; there was little if any consideration given to the long-term impact on the environment. This has changed slowly over the years: researchers have proposed alternative techniques and revised popular methods to reduce the use of resources and lessen pollution. But have we done enough to make analytical science green?

In this article, we seek answers to the following questions:

• Do analytical technologies have a substantial environmental impact?
  
• If they do, with whom does the responsibility lie to reduce this impact?
  
• What technology developments will help us to clean up our act?
  
• What is being done to incentivize these technologies?

The answers are provided by thought-leaders from academia, industry and the equipment manufacturers.

Academic Analysis

Three of Europe’s leading advocates for greener analytical chemistry offer their views on issues such as how to reduce solvent use, the parameters for successful green technologies and the possibility of replacing instrument testing with environment-friendly alternatives.

Pat Sandra

How committed are you to sustainability?

Sustainability is of utmost importance. We use a range of green techniques in our daily work and try to reduce the use of solvents, reagents, and additives, as much as possible, and to select benign solvents (for example, acetone, ethanol, and CO₂).

I’m a member of the EU scientific advisory council and sustainability is a hot topic in our discussions.

What steps have you taken to implement greener analytical science?

Part of our research is dedicated to the development of green sample preparation and chromatographic techniques. We have published several articles describing these approaches. Miniaturization is the key.

Ultra high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) is a convenient and efficient way to reduce solvent consumption. I recommend short, narrow-bore columns and sub-2 μm packing material; this can reduce solvent consumption by as much as 90 percent. You can, of course, miniaturize further, using capillaries or chips, down to μL to nL/min flow rates. On the other hand, switching to more benign solvents compared to those presently used is much more complicated – but it is possible.

We also use gas chromatography (GC) and supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). GC is greener than LC – notwithstanding the shortage of helium and its cost. SFC is considered to be green because it uses less toxic organic solvent and fewer additives than LC;  on the other side of the coin, there is an argument that carbon dioxide-based techniques are not environmentally friendly as they produce greenhouse gases. However, the CO₂ used in SFC is reclaimed from the atmosphere and when it is used for preparative processes it is recycled.

Finally, we are also taking a greener approach to sample pretreatment techniques, approaches that enable miniaturization and solventless operation. What we are finding is that these are often much more productive and cost-effective than the classical enrichment methods.

How easy was it to make the changes?

Well, it is not difficult to make changes. However, one has to take care not to violate the guidelines and the norms! This can be a particular problem for industry: changing a validated method to a green method is often rather expensive.

Do greener technologies and techniques provide the quality and efficiency required?

They must, otherwise it makes no sense to develop them. Having said this, I note that some so-called greener methods have been published that are less robust than conventional methods, that are too difficult to be implemented in routine laboratories, or that are impossible to automate. These contentious issues have appeared in recent literature.

Pat Sandra is at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Ghent University and Founder and President of the Research Institute for Chromatography, Kortrijk, Belgium.

Mihkel Kaljurand

How did you get into greener analytical science?

My interest in green analytical chemistry developed as something of a happy accident. We were HPLC users until about 15 years ago, when the economic situation in Estonia forced us to switch to capillary electrophoresis (CE). It was cheap – we used our own instrumentation – and it required a negligible amount of solvent. Given this, Mihkel Koel and I published a paper hailing capillary electrophoresis (CE) as a green analytical method. The article attracted a lot of attention, which led to invitations to write books and papers on the topic.

Recently, we introduced simple colorimetric assays using paper to test wine and herbal tea for antioxidant activity. Designing paper-based colorimetric tests is rather easy; the only challenge is finding the right reaction. But you need funding; you need to be able to convince financing agencies and proposal referees that green analytical chemistry is a serious research topic. Sometimes we have succeeded in this, and sometimes we have not.

Is “being green” a sufficient goal for new technologies?

No. I am afraid that if the only motivation to introduce green analytical methods is commitment to sustainability, very few laboratories will succeed in introducing them. There must also be a financial incentive. CE running costs are small compared to HPLC; likewise, the cost of colorimetric testing using paper is negligible compared to instrumental methods.

How do they compare in terms of accuracy and sensitivity?

In general, green tests are less accurate and less sensitive, and they are not as efficient. However, it is often the case that the accuracy, detection limits and efficiency provided by modern instrumentation is greatly in excess of what is actually required.  What we need is accurate information and our methods meet this requirement.

Where do you see green analytical chemistry going?

The two biggest issues are how to use less harmful solvents and how to reduce cost of experiments.

Another thing I’d point out is that the production of instruments generates a substantial ecological footprint, a fact that’s often overlooked in green analytical chemistry publications. I suggest that the aim of green analytical chemistry research should be to find approaches that replace instrumental testing. Unfortunately, little is being done in this respect and I do not believe that the instrument companies would be happy about such an aim!

Mihkel Kaljurand is at the Department of Chemistry, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia.

Caroline West

How committed are you to sustainability?

In my everyday life, as well as in my work as an analytical scientist, I try to select solutions that are more sustainable and take steps to change habits.

I would like all chromatographers to be greener, but I am realistic; I understand that progress is far quicker when change produces other benefits, such as an economic advantage. The greener way is not always feasible – and rarely easy. Also, getting people to change their habits is always a huge challenge.

What’s your approach to green analytical chemistry?

I work a lot with supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). Its reduced solvent consumption make SFC inherently greener than HPLC methods on comparable scales; however, how the technique is practiced can make a big difference. For example, methods that consume even less solvent can be developed by careful selection of stationary phases and choosing ethanol over methanol.

I try to educate my students about greener methods, especially in terms of sample preparation and experimental designs that avoid wasting solvents and energy.

Caroline West is at the Institute of Organic and Analytical Chemistry (ICOA), University of Orléans, France.

Industry Insights

A number of large organizations in the private and public sectors rely heavily on analytical science, contributing significantly to its overall impact on the environment. Here, Wayde Konze (Dow Chemical Company, and Nikki Dalby (UK Food and Environment Research Agency) share insights, from more sustainable industrial processes to energy efficiency measures in the lab.

Wayde Konze

How does Dow approach sustainability?

In research and development, Dow applies the principles of sustainable chemistry and engineering across all areas. This typically translates into four main themes:

• Reduced hazard
• Atom economy (maximize the utilization of every atom)
• Energy footprint
• Holistic design (lifecycle approach quantifying energy, water and emission footprints).

The analytical science team plays a big part in making products and processes safer, more economical, and more sustainable (from the raw material standpoint). This is not a recent adjustment; we’ve evolved as we learned from experience, research findings, publications, and other sources.

We are also carrying out hypothesis-driven research to minimize the number of studies while maximizing the impact to businesses; this is reducing the number of samples that we process.

In addition, we have implemented several initiatives within our analytical labs to reduce our utilization of solvents, materials and inert gases, and to minimize waste and improve safety. New technologies have been introduced that have had a substantial impact in this regard. These include micro-column liquid separations, to reduce solvent consumption; microwave digestion, to avoid large quantities of acids in inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) analysis; and size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and SFC, which reduce solvent and waste costs by 80 percent. We have also refurbished our helium manifolds to improve our usage efficiency.

So you use analytical science to make other processes more efficient?

Yes. The point is less about “greening analytical science” than understanding the critical role it can play in reducing waste, energy and resources over the long term. If we develop a more sustainable process by using hypothesis-driven research, we ultimately perform fewer experiments at greater speed.

We have done a lot of internal research on coupling high-throughput capabilities with appropriate analytical techniques to answer the right questions with a significantly smaller sample size. This has been challenging and required a lot of combined expertise to accomplish. However, we are now using these workflows to find new solutions faster and with less solvent utilization. The big impact at Dow is using analytical science to support good, sustainable decisions. Saving a few liters of solvent in the lab pales in comparison.

We come out of the lab with a much better fundamental understanding of the chemical process, kinetics, mass transfer, and so on, so innovations can be scaled up much more reliably. This creates a lot less waste in pilot plants and in initial production runs. Furthermore, we can optimize components, such as catalysts, to drive more efficient and sustainable processes in our production plants.
Regarding analytical instrumentation, we recently partnered with a vendor to co-develop new ultra-high performance SEC technology for polymer separations – a critical aspect for our company. This was a great success. The instrument reduces solvent and waste costs by about 80 percent, while providing the same or better quality and efficiency of analysis.

Wayde Konze is Director of Analytical Sciences at The Dow Chemical Company, Saginaw, MI, USA

Nikki Dalby

How have FERA’s methods become greener?

Many of our analytical methods have been consolidated into multi-analyte approaches, which reduces solvent, column, consumable, and reference standard usage. We also maximize the number of batches per run, which has the same effect. A number of our analytical methods have been redeveloped to reduce dichloromethane and acetonitrile usage wherever possible.

What were the challenges in making those changes?

The main challenge comes from ensuring that the quality of data is uncompromised. All analytical methods had to be re-validated, of course, to check consistency before and after changes were implemented.

FERA is quite a big site – how have you tackled energy usage?

We’ve put in a lot of effort in recent years. Smart meters were used to assess the running costs of laboratory equipment and studies were carried out to evaluate optimal settings, enabling us to adjust operating temperatures for fridges and freezers, water bath temperatures and drying cabinets. We added timers to ensure equipment was turned off when not required.

The number of printers across the site was significantly reduced by introducing networked printers and setting these to automatically print double-sided, cutting the paper usage by half. Dishwashers have been switched to cold feed instead of hot, light sensors have been added to the majority of rooms, and a number of water saving initiatives were implemented, including installing water purifiers instead of buying bottled water with an associated shelf life.

Nikki Dalby is Team Leader at the Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Group, Food and Environment Research Agency, UK.

Going Green from the Ground Up

By Howard Handley

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water is a company that supplies drinking water and wastewater services to most of Wales and parts of western England. In early 2012, Welsh Water had the rare opportunity to design and build a new state-of-the-art potable water testing laboratory. While the quality of data was the foremost priority for any decision, reducing impact on the environment was a key factor in determining the choice of design, process and equipment.

Welsh Water worked with a number of instrument manufacturers to design the processes required. Of these, Agilent were particularly supportive in providing the technology needed to implement more environmentally-sustainable solutions. Among the equipment purchased  was highly sensitive LC and GC instrumentation capable of achieving extremely low limits of detection with greatly reduced solvent extraction methods. High sensitivity ICP-MS instruments allowed methods to be developed for metals testing that halved the energy usage normally associated with such analysis. This was achieved by combining suites of analysis to enable more than 30 elements to be analyzed from less than 10ml of sample.

As part of the building design, solar panels were added to the roof to reduce reliance on the grid. Rainwater is collected from the roof and diverted into a grass swale rather than into the sewerage system. While this doesn’t impact the laboratory directly, it delivers reduced water treatment costs and a reduced risk of flooding.

As the company was opening a new laboratory, it was relatively easy to incorporate sustainable choices from the outset. It can be very difficult to change accredited and regulated methods once in use and often the development resource needed to bring about change is in very short supply. Welsh Water recruited a team of specialist scientists to create a more sustainable laboratory model from the beginning. There was also a huge economical benefit: the technologies selected for the new laboratory have made annual savings of more than £1M in ongoing operational costs.

Howard Handley is Laboratory Services Manager at Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Newport, Wales.

Meticulous Manufacturers

Shifting blame is common in issues of environmental sustainability and some believe instrument manufacturers should shoulder much of the responsibility. Here, upper-management from Waters Corporation and Thermo Fisher Scientific describe how they are both pulling their weight.

Dan McCormick and James McCabe

How does your company tackle the green issue?

The Waters strategy is to develop products that are not only intrinsically green, but that enable a move into a greener world. For example, our products are evolving to smaller footprints, higher productivity, lower solvent use and lower sample volumes, coupled with design simplification for more efficient manufacturing and increased lifespan.

We have a series of initiatives in place to support the migration to greener products. In addition to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directives, we have implemented two other practices. Firstly, Waters continually works towards extending the lifespan of its products, either through the design of more reliable components and subassemblies, or through modular designs that simplify worn part replacement. Secondly, we employ a cross-discipline approach to the reduction of energy consumption. Low voltage, low power digital design practices are coupled with software that manages load sharing within the product to further save power.

Which Waters products exemplify this approach?

The search for meaningful impact has given us a number of products that offer environmental benefits while ensuring analytical performance. To name a couple, our ACQUITY systems reduce solvent and energy consumption by reducing analysis time, and the UPC2 employs “convergence chromatography,” which uses compressed gas and liquids for solvent flow, which simplifies the transition of samples to chromatographic systems and also reduces solvent use.

How do you promote greener analytical science to the market?

A significant selling point for UPLC and SFC is the reduction in solvent usage as compared with conventional liquid chromatography. For the most part, clients are as motivated as Waters to reduce costs and carbon footprints. We estimate that our installed base of UPLC instruments has eliminated more than five million liters of solvent from the global waste stream since 2004.

Where do you see the highest uptake of green technology?

It can be easier for those markets that are not subject to scrutiny by government agencies to make the change; those in the chemical industry can adopt this type of technology more easily than the pharmaceutical industry, for example. This is not a conflict but juxtaposition of the needs of today being subjected to the regulations of yesterday – and the slow nature of change that can reduce the impact of new technologies. Uptake for more regulated industries will likely be accomplished through significantly improved analytical benefits and the use of more efficient technologies.

What would you say to convince analytical scientists to move to greener technology?

In today’s marketplace there is increasing pressure for everyone to participate at some level to make a contribution. Pharmaceutical and chemical companies are reaching Carbon Disclosure Project scores that indicate they are actively pursuing an improvement within their companies – and telling the world about their efforts. Lab managers should not ignore the need to participate in greener technology. If they do not direct it today they may find it imposed on them in the future.

Dan McCormick (pictured) is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, and James McCabe is Sustainability Manager, Global Operations/Services, at Waters Corporation, Milford, MA, USA.

Daryl Belock

How does Thermo Fisher Scientific approach sustainability?

Generally, we look at ways to reduce the amounts of consumables necessary to operate analytical instruments, in addition to addressing waste, energy consumption, and specialty gas requirements.

What in your portfolio is most environmentally friendly?

In a company of our size, the list is extremely long. A few that come to mind are the “reagent-free ion chromatography” instrument that uses water as its mobile phase rather than strong solvents; our Trace 1300 Series GC system with a helium-conserving enhancement; SOLA solid phase extraction components that reduce solvent waste and extend column life. The latest generation of nano, capillary and microbore HPLC systems also use less solvent, reducing organic waste streams.

Aside from producing instruments that reduce the impact of general analysis on the environment, Thermo has a passion for raising the bar in environmental monitoring. Our portfolio of solutions includes air quality instruments to measure primary atmospheric pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide and particulate matter concentrations; instruments to measure water quality, such as pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen; trace element analysis instruments to measure elemental pollutants, such as lead, arsenic, chromium; and chromatography-mass spectrometry instruments to measure such qualities or pollutants, such as anions/cations, pesticides, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

What are the challenges for labs that want to be more environmentally efficient?

Many labs use approved methods. Unfortunately, it’s not always cost-effective to alter and revalidate a method on the basis of environmental impact alone.

What would you say to inspire commitment to the environment?

Society as a whole is recognizing the importance of protecting the environment and conserving increasingly precious natural resources. The scientific community is an integral part of this scenario; analytical scientists should choose technology and techniques that facilitate their important work whilst also reducing environmental impact.

Daryl Belock is Vice-President, Innovation and R&D Collaboration at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Waltham, MA, USA.