PatIntNews

Scientists in Hyderabad have found for the first time that a clay called chamosite can be exploited as a reusable catalyst in a process used for synthesis of a variety of organic compounds including drugs like aspirin, nitroglycerine, chloramphenicol and sulphanilamides, known as 'acylation'. This marine clay from Tuticorin in southern India, thus shows a 'green route' for synthetsis for some organic compounds.

The process of Acylation is usually carried out by treatment of alcohols or amines (organic compounds containing Nitrogen) with acetyl chloride or acetic anhydride in the presence of a catalyst in an organic solvent. Currently existing catalysts suffer from drawbacks that they cannot be recovered or reused and have to be disposed of carefully.

"One of the current challenges is to develop synthetic methods that are less polluting," says B. Sreedhar, lead author of the study. "We found that, the Tuticorin clay, serves as an efficient and reusable, heterogenous catalyst for the acylation of alcohols and amines," he says. The process that expliots the clay catalyst is reasonably fast and clean without any side products. "environmentally benign green chemistry both at industrial level and laboratory scale", he says.

The authors of this work are from: Indian Institute of Chemical Technology IICT, Hyderabad, India & National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, India.