Water as a reaction medium for clean chemical processes

Solvent usage is often an integral part of manufacturing process, whether it is chemical or another industrial sector. Thus, this unavoidable choice of a specific solvent for a desired manufacturing process can have profound economical, environmental, and societal implications. Some of the impacts are long lasting especially from an environmental perspective, which has been well documented in the scientific literature. The pressing need to develop alternative solvents for manufacturing processes originates, in part, from these implications and constitutes an essential strategy under an emerging field of green chemistry. Whereas there have been excellent advances in developing several alternative “clean” solvents, it is unlikely that the one solvent will be a panacea for various chemical protocols. This article provides some examples of using water as an alternative solvent for chemical reactions with wide-ranging possibilities that include direct use of water soluble renewable materials, C–C bond forming reactions using organometallic reagents, and exploiting the use of alternate energy sources such as solar, microwave and ultrasound in accelerating chemical syntheses.