Themed collection 2025 Green Chemistry Reviews

Green fairytales. We may not like it, but the reality is that green hydrogen is too expensive and its manufacturing on a large global scale in the 21^st century is untenable.

Proposal of a general set of universal rules allowing an increase in the scientific value provided by the evaluation of greenness and other “colours”.

The conversion and utilization of greenhouse gases and other polluting gases in an environmentally friendly way represents a crucial strategy for developing C₁ chemistry and mitigating the dual crises of energy scarcity and the greenhouse effect.

An indirect hotspot is a process step that may cause little harm on its own but has a strong influence on a very harmful tstep (the direct hotspot) and thereby the total harm of the process.

Co-production of lime and soda ash through the anion exchange process is economically sustainable and can immediately reduce global CO₂ emissions by 37 Mt.

Molecular magnetism and computational chemistry examples of frugal modelling as a tool to prioritize energy-efficient algorithms to minimize resource intensive operations.

As a renewable green energy source, the catalytic upgrading of ethanol to higher alcohols (C₄₊) represents a critical pathway to overcome its inherent fuel limitations.

This work comprehensively reviewed the recent advances in biomass-based molecularly imprinted polymers (bio-based MIPs), including classification, design strategies, and diverse applications.

Organic electrochemical synthesis has become a practical and environmentally friendly synthesis method and is widely used in oxidation, reduction, and redox-neutral reactions.

This review explores how two-dimensional materials uniquely respond to industrial-level current densities in seawater electrolysis, offering in-depth insights into structure-driven stability, selectivity, and green hydrogen production efficiency.

This review highlights the enzymatic advances in the synthesis of emerging prebiotics, focusing on improved control, biocatalyst enhancement, and bioprocess intensification.

Electrolytic olefin epoxidation is a sustainable alternative to the thermocatalytic epoxidation. This article provides a state of the art overview in this field, focusing on the formation strategy of the reactive oxygen species.

This review summarizes aqueous liquid–liquid phase separation (AqLLPS) mechanisms, design strategies, and applications for biocatalysis, including enzymatic synthesis, biosensing, and therapeutics.

This review aims to elucidate the prospects of the selective chemical degradation of polyurethane and high-value recycling strategies based on the selective cleavage of C–O/C–N bonds.

Analysis of key factors that affect electrocatalytic oxidation and separation and purification processes for the conversion of biomass-derived furans into 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA).

Transforming waste—biomass, plastics, and CO₂—into renewable aromatics via pyrolysis and chemocatalysis: advancing sustainable catalysts and technologies for a circular economy and environmental mitigation.

This review highlights emerging electrothermal strategies, including Joule, microwave, plasma, induction, and laser heating, for selectively upcycling plastic waste into hydrogen, olefins, aromatics, and carbon materials under renewable energy input.

Green chemistry approaches to digestate valorization support circular bioeconomy and advance UN sustainable development goals.

Barochemistry, the use of high hydrostatic pressure, is a powerful green activation method that enables effective, scalable, energy efficient and solvent-free synthesis—offering a distinct advantages over other non-traditional activation techniques.

Base-metal-catalyzed carbonylation utilizing CO surrogates.

Metallosilicates feature framework-incorporated metal sites, serve as efficient catalysts for green selective oxidation reactions, and act as effective supports for confining precious metals in the conversion of low-carbon resources.

Green amine synthesis is assessed using the CHEM21 green metrics toolkit, offering a step-by-step guide for sustainability evaluation and promoting environmentally conscious transformations.

This review focuses on homogeneous recyclable catalytic systems for direct C–H bond functionalization in organic synthesis, eliminating pre-functionalization. It explores recyclable catalysts with various metals and metal-free approaches.

Physical, chemical, and biological methods can prepare core-shell structured LMNPs. The cube in the figure symbolizes their diverse biomedical applications, with its height indicating the breadth of these applications.

The integration of nanostructured catalytic cavitation agents, microfluidic solutions, and computational molecular modelling forms a trilateral synergistic platform that unlocks new potential of sonocatalysis in green and sustainable chemistry.

Hydrogen spillover, involving active H species migration between high- and weak-affinity sites, gains attention for its unique mechanism and accelerated kinetics.

The research about photocatalytic, electrocatalytic, and thermocatalytic CO₂ reduction, with single-atom catalysts (SACs).

This review aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the specific mechanisms underlying the magnetic field effect, and amplifying the advantages of magnetic-field-assisted photocatalytic technology in elevating the CO₂ reduction efficiency.

This review focuses on advances in bioplastics built on a D-xylose core, and points the way for their current challenges and future opportunities.

SWOT analysis of MOFs through the lens of safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) framework, highlighting their potential, challenges, and future directions (Prepared using Biorender Software).

Chitin is a sustainable source of naturally-fixed nitrogen. This review explores advances in converting chitin into nitrogen-containing compounds, emphasizing progress in synthesizing benzenoid aromatics and highlighting future prospects.

Waste polyolefins are efficiently upgraded into value-added products through hydrocracking, hydrolysis and tandem catalytic processes with non-noble metal catalysts.

We highlight the advancements toward electrophotochemical ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) catalysis, which has contributed to advancing sustainable radical chemistry by exploiting both visible light and electricity as clean energy inputs.

Humins are side-products derived from the acid-catalysed conversion of carbohydrate-containing biomass, including sugars (e.g. glucose, fructose, sucrose), oligo-, polysaccharides, and lignocellulosic feedstocks into HMF, furfural and levulinic acid.

The materials, preparation methods, properties, and applications of biodegradable microbeads in personal care products and cosmetics.

The based ex-ante techno-environmental-economic assessment based on process simulation can predict the performance based on the exiting laboratory- or pilot-scale experiment results and provide multidimensional quantified guidance.

This paper summarizes the recent advances in the biosynthesis of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) from organic waste-derived volatile fatty acids (VFAs).

This feature article provides a comprehensive summary of the valorization of substances in the chemical recycling of polyvinyl chloride.

This review compares biohydrogen and biomethane production via photo-fermentation, emphasizing their complementary roles as sustainable bioenergy sources.

This review highlights the utilization of bimetallic catalysts in the catalytic hydrogenation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and summarizes metal–support interactions, including the electronic and steric effects, oxygen vacancies, and acidity.

Porous liquids are a novel class of porous materials that integrate the permanent porosity of solids with the fluidity of liquids.

The catalytic CO₂ to methanol conversion enables sustainable fuel production and emissions reduction. Advanced catalysts, reaction mechanisms, and process optimization are critically analyzed.

We evaluated the advantages and limitations of various BP chemical conversion technologies. Influencing factors and mechanisms are discussed in detail.

This review analyzes recent advances and limitations in low-temperature plasma-enabled CO₂ dissociation setups and mechanisms, proposing a strategic outlook for the techno-economic feasibility toward scale-up valorization.

Green resins for vat photopolymerization are critically assessed, highlighting bio-based feedstocks, synthetic trade-offs, and a unified green metric for guiding future materials design.

Mining activities generate significant waste that poses serious environmental challenges, emphasizing the urgent need for effective waste management strategies.

CO₂-responsive membrane separation systems represent an exciting separation technology owing to their ability to achieve controlled and efficient separation processes.

From the viewpoints of energy efficiency, cost effectiveness, and eco-friendliness, we systematically summarize the recent advances in the chemical recycling and biodegradation of post-consumer polystyrene waste.

Maleic anhydride is one of the most widely used anhydrides after acetic and phthalic anhydride and its market has grown rapidly over the last century.

This review first provides a comprehensive overview of NaDES theory and subsequently explores all potential applications of NaDES in the pharmaceutical industry, highlighting overlooked issues such as toxicity and process limitations.

Sustainable biomass materials are at the forefront of green technologies across energy conversion, water purification and chemical processes.

This review includes the key steps in the synthesis of NIPUs. The key aspects in the synthesis, characterization, and functionalization of NIPUs are analyzed in detail, along with giving insights into the recently published LCA analyses.

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and fast/flash pyrolysis are thermochemical processes (TPs) with proven potential to convert biomass into liquid biofuel, which can be comparable to crude oil after proper upgrading.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have gained significant attention as photocatalysts due to their high crystallinity, tunable porosity, and exceptional optoelectronic properties, particularly their ability to absorb a broad range of visible light.

Exploring insights of interfacial engineering of heterojunction photocatalysts for solar-driven CO₂ conversion to multicarbon fuels.

As a crucial biomass derivative, furfural (FF) can be converted into various high value-added chemicals in an environmentally friendly and efficient manner through electrocatalytic technology.

This review reports the applications of commercially available and custom-made organic carbonates as green media from laboratory to industrial scale applications.

Exploring green chemistry perspectives on click chemistry approaches for cellulose functionalization.

This article presents a novel strategy for co-pyrolyzing biomass and plastic waste to produce advanced carbon materials. It systematically evaluates the reaction mechanisms, process dynamics, environmental benefits, and sustainable materials.

This review explores recent advances in lignin depolymerisation and its conversion into polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) via microbial biotransformation. It evaluates the opportunities and challenges in enhancing sustainable PHA production from lignin.

Emerging technologies-empowered thermochemical plastic valorization is developed for value-added products in green and practical manner, which are beneficial to achieving circular plastic economy and several UN sustainable development goals.