Can “mechanochemical” help humans to overcome barriers from contemporary chemistry? Perhaps it is time to say goodbye to liquids.

If you imagine a chemistry laboratory as a place full of liquids in pipes, it has a more or less appropriate view of reality. But a UK team is trying to change this concept – wants to eliminate liquid chemistry.

In fact, chemistry was not always about liquids, foam, bubbles. In the late nineteenth century, the chemist Matthew Carey Lea adopted the term “Mecanochemistry“Child by German scientist Wilhelm Ostwald two years earlier.

At each step, chemicals dissolve the necessary ingredients in a solvent, usually warm them, and then evaporate or filter the solvent to obtain the product, describes a.

But the solvents also have huge disadvantages. Many carbon -based or organic chemicals do not dissolve in water, so chemicals have to use other solvents, such as chloroform, acetonitrile or tetrahydrofuran. The problem? Many of them are toxic.

Chemists now want to understand what is happening at the molecular level. For this, they need techniques such as Raman spectroscopy and x -ray diffraction (XRD) to observe the mixtures of mechanical and chemical reactions and discover the identities and structures of the contained molecules.

According to scientists, these methods, and the chemical revolution that can come from there may even lead to a complete industrial revolution.

Ina Vollmer’s team, for example, has recently been able to perform chemical recycling at room temperature using an ingenious grinding system in which the catalysts that drive reactions are trapped in their own balls.

However, there are still difficulties to overcome – the price, for example. For now, it is still simpler to use beizer than complex mechanical systems. But the future can dictate something else.

Can “mechanochemical” help humans to overcome barriers from contemporary chemistry? Perhaps it is time to say goodbye to liquids.

If you imagine a chemistry laboratory as a place full of liquids in pipes, it has a more or less appropriate view of reality. But a UK team is trying to change this concept – wants to eliminate liquid chemistry.

In fact, chemistry was not always about liquids, foam, bubbles. In the late nineteenth century, the chemist Matthew Carey Lea adopted the term “Mecanochemistry“Child by German scientist Wilhelm Ostwald two years earlier.

At each step, chemicals dissolve the necessary ingredients in a solvent, usually warm them, and then evaporate or filter the solvent to obtain the product, describes a.

But the solvents also have huge disadvantages. Many carbon -based or organic chemicals do not dissolve in water, so chemicals have to use other solvents, such as chloroform, acetonitrile or tetrahydrofuran. The problem? Many of them are toxic.

Chemists now want to understand what is happening at the molecular level. For this, they need techniques such as Raman spectroscopy and x -ray diffraction (XRD) to observe the mixtures of mechanical and chemical reactions and discover the identities and structures of the contained molecules.

According to scientists, these methods, and the chemical revolution that can come from there may even lead to a complete industrial revolution.

Ina Vollmer’s team, for example, has recently been able to perform chemical recycling at room temperature using an ingenious grinding system in which the catalysts that drive reactions are trapped in their own balls.

However, there are still difficulties to overcome – the price, for example. For now, it is still simpler to use beizer than complex mechanical systems. But the future can dictate something else.