Complementary green analytical procedure index (ComplexGAPI) and software

Abstract

It is not easy to find appropriate tools for the evaluation of the “green” nature of analytical methodologies which involve the use of compounds, materials, or chemicals manufactured prior to the analytical step. Here, we propose a new metric for the evaluation of analytical procedures based on the GAC attributes. The proposed solution expands on the well-known green analytical procedure index by adding additional fields pertaining to the processes performed prior to the analytical procedure itself. Each field of the hexagon that was added to the GAPI pictogram corresponds to a different aspect of the described process and is coloured green if certain requirements are met. To showcase the utility of the proposed metric, it was used to evaluate analytical protocols for the determination of pesticides in urine samples. We believe that, following GAPI's success, ComplexGAPI will also gain attention and eventually trust and acceptance from the chemical community. To facilitate the use of this tool, we have created freeware software for generating the ComplexGAPI pictograms.