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Green and Sustainable Chemistry; Renewable Resources; Analytical Chemistry; Education

Greener Air Monitoring by Thermal Desorption (April 9)

webinar banner image with title and time as well as speaker headshot with yellow and green background
Event Date
-
Event Type
Hosting Organization(s)
Merck Life Science Srl

Event Description

This webinar will take place at 10am Central European Time (4am Eastern Time). The same webinar is also being presented on April 10th at 1pm Eastern Time (see separate event listing here).

Air Monitoring is a very important analytical field in environmental analysis and industrial hygiene. It is a discipline whose sole aim is to ensure the air we breathe is safe and free from hazardous VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). VOCs can be emitted from products of daily use or emitted during the manufacturing of polymers, adhesives, paints, petroleum products or pharmaceuticals.

To monitor such compounds in the air, these are trapped in collection devices such as tubes or badges with adsorbents. For analysis, the trapped compounds need to be desorbed from the adsorbents. This could be achieved using a solvent (solvent desorption) or by heat (thermal desorption).

This webinar discusses the details of thermal desorption, its benefits and limitations compared to solvent desorption. In particular, it demonstrates why thermal desorption is the much greener approach for air monitoring using different application examples and metrics based on the 12 Principles of Green Analytical Chemistry for the greenness of analytical methods.

In this webinar, you will learn:

  • Theory and background of Thermal Desorption in Air Monitoring
  • 12 Principles of Green Analytical Chemistry
  • Approaches to assess the greenness of analytical methods
  • Sustainability advantages of Thermal Desorption

 

Speaker:

Frank Michel, Ph.D. Technical Marketing, Scientific Education & Sustainability, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

 

Frank Michel received his diploma and PhD in Analytical Chemistry at University of Muenster/Germany. At Bernina Biosystems, a biopharmaceutical company, he developed and validated analytical HPLC and other methods for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), including excipients and drug products. Later Frank changed to Sigma-Aldrich and had various roles in Product Development, Marketing and Customer Education in Analytical Chemistry. After an engagement at HWI Analytik, an analytical service provider for the pharmaceutical industry, he returned in 2010 to Sigma-Aldrich (since Nov. 2015 part of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) as Scientific Advisor for Analytical Chemistry. During his career, Frank focused already on Green Analytical Chemistry, e.g. by miniaturization in HPLC for solvent savings and the solvent-free extraction technology SPME. Since 2022 he is responsible for sustainability and training in Chemistry.

Frank is a member of both the Sustainable Chemistry and the Separation Science working group in the German Chemist Society (GDCh), member of the IUPAC project team “Greenness of official standard sample preparation methods” and in the EuChemS-DAC Sample Preparation Study Group and Network.

Greener Air Monitoring by Thermal Desorption (April 10)

webinar banner image with title and time as well as speaker headshot with yellow and green background
Event Date
-
Event Type
Hosting Organization(s)
Merck Life Science Srl

Event Description

This webinar will take place at 1pm Eastern Time (7pm Central European Time). The same webinar is also being presented on April 9th at 10am Central European Time (see separate event listing here).

Air Monitoring is a very important analytical field in environmental analysis and industrial hygiene. It is a discipline whose sole aim is to ensure the air we breathe is safe and free from hazardous VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). VOCs can be emitted from products of daily use or emitted during the manufacturing of polymers, adhesives, paints, petroleum products or pharmaceuticals.

To monitor such compounds in the air, these are trapped in collection devices such as tubes or badges with adsorbents. For analysis, the trapped compounds need to be desorbed from the adsorbents. This could be achieved using a solvent (solvent desorption) or by heat (thermal desorption).

This webinar discusses the details of thermal desorption, its benefits and limitations compared to solvent desorption. In particular, it demonstrates why thermal desorption is the much greener approach for air monitoring using different application examples and metrics based on the 12 Principles of Green Analytical Chemistry for the greenness of analytical methods.

In this webinar, you will learn:

  • Theory and background of Thermal Desorption in Air Monitoring
  • 12 Principles of Green Analytical Chemistry
  • Approaches to assess the greenness of analytical methods
  • Sustainability advantages of Thermal Desorption

 

Speaker:

Frank Michel, Scientific Education & Sustainability, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Frank Michel received his diploma and PhD in Analytical Chemistry at University of Muenster/Germany. At Bernina Biosystems, a biopharmaceutical company, he developed and validated analytical HPLC and other methods for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), including excipients and drug products. Later Frank changed to Sigma-Aldrich and had various roles in Product Development, Marketing and Customer Education in Analytical Chemistry. After an engagement at HWI Analytik, an analytical service provider for the pharmaceutical industry, he returned in 2010 to Sigma-Aldrich (since Nov. 2015 part of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany) as Scientific Advisor for Analytical Chemistry. During his career, Frank focused already on Green Analytical Chemistry, e.g. by miniaturization in HPLC for solvent savings and the solvent-free extraction technology SPME. Since 2022 he is responsible for sustainability and training in Chemistry.

Frank is a member of both the Sustainable Chemistry and the Separation Science working group in the German Chemist Society (GDCh), member of the IUPAC project team “Greenness of official standard sample preparation methods” and in the EuChemS-DAC Sample Preparation Study Group and Network.

Green Chemistry as the Foundation of Sustainability and the Circular Economy

Green Chemistry Webinar with John Warner on 04/03/2025
Event Date
-
Event Type
Hosting Organization(s)
Merck Life Science Srl

Event Description

While there is a lot of discussion about WHY we need sustainability (Climate Change, Forever Chemicals, Human Toxicity, Ecosystem Degradation…) and WHAT we should do to measure and characterize sustainability (LCA’s, UN SDGs, Circular Economy, Safe and Sustainable by Design, Planetary Boundaries…) It is especially important to discuss HOW we should make these changes. This is the domain of Green Chemistry.

When a researcher contemplates a new experiment, when an inventor imagines a new product, he or she makes several small and large decisions that will have profound impact on the ultimate sustainability of what they do. If they do not have the skills and tools to understand the sustainability implications at the mechanistic molecular level (green chemistry), it is unlikely that they will successfully achieve sustainability objectives. This presentation will discuss how green chemistry can be integrated into the earliest stages of research and development to ensure maximum sustainability. Real world, commercialized examples will be used to illustrate key points.

In this webinar, you will learn:

  • The Why’s and the What’s of sustainability are important, but solutions come from How (green chemistry).
  • It is not enough to simply WANT to create sustainable technologies, there are certain critical skills required, as defined by the 12 principles of green chemistry.
  • Not only does green chemistry have moral and ethical implications, but it is also a pathway to accelerate R&D and lower costs. (If you truly understand green chemistry).
  • Several commercialize products illustrate the reality of green chemistry’s successful implementation in the real world.

  

Speaker:

John C. Warner

CEO & CTO, Technology Greenhouse, LLC

 

John Warner is one of the founders of the field of green chemistry. He wrote the book that provides the definition and 12 principles of green chemistry with Paul Anastas in 1998.He received his B.Sc. from UMASS Boston and his PhD from Princeton University.As an industrial chemist, he has over 350 patents and has worked with hundreds of companies worldwide and serves on the sustainability advisory boards of several multinational companies. He received the Perkin Medal in 2014 from The Society of Industrial Chemistry.As an educator, he was a tenured full professor of chemistry and a tenured full professor of plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts where he started the world’s first PhD program in Green Chemistry. He has over 120 publications in synthetic methodologies, noncovalent derivatization, polymer photochemistry and metal oxide semiconductors. In 2004 he received the Presidential Award for excellence in science mentoring (PAESMEM) from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and President George W Bush and in 2022 he received the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal from the German Chemical Society. In 2007 he cofounded Beyond Benign, a nonprofit green chemistry education organization with Dr. Amy Cannon.As an entrepreneur, John’s inventions have led to the founding of many companies in the fields of photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting and cosmetics. In 2016 he received the Lemelson Invention Ambassadorship from the Lemelson Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS).