Survey of Solvent Selection Guides

In the previous lesson, differences in structure and weighting of HSE criteria in published solvent selection guides were discussed. Initial work carried out by the CHEM21 project included building a methodology to compare the 5 guides available (AZ, GCI-PR, GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi). This methodology, explained in the video, consists of a comparison of the rankings (color codes) of the 51 more represented solvents in these guides. For guides which did not offer a clear ranking (AZ, GSK, GCI-PR), the number of criteria was reduced to three: one for Safety, one for Health, one for Environment. For each guide, three solvent groups of similar size were built around the arithmetical mean, with a classical color code (green, yellow, red). It was thus easy to compare the color code of each solvent in the different guides (Table 1).

This color code comparison gave a clear agreement (large majority) for 34 of the 51 solvents (two thirds of solvents overall). Further discussion permitted the identification of the most hazardous solvents. One third of solvents could not be ranked (named “to be confirmed” in Table 1), thus reflecting the different weighting of criteria in the solvent guides [1] . The overall list is given in Table 2.