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Synthesis of methylene blue and some new thioether derivatives with an enhanced electrochemical microflow cell

Project description

Green chemistry for drug synthesis

Chemical synthesis suffers from significant limitations including toxicity, safety and high cost. In contrast, organic electrosynthesis takes place in one step under mild conditions, without the need of chemical reagents, in an environmentally friendly manner. In light of this, the EU-funded BlueFlowCell project aims to fabricate an electrochemical flow microreactor to drive the electrosynthesis of a wide range of reactions without a supporting electrolyte solution. Scientists plan to use this approach to synthesise methylene blue, the first fully synthetic drug used in medicine, and thioether derivatives widely employed in medicinal chemistry or as antioxidant and antibacterial agents.

Objective

Methylene blue is the first fully synthetic drug used in medicine, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system. In addition, thioethers derivatives are important materials that are used in organic, bioorganic and medicinal chemistry and are also known to exhibit different biological activities such as antioxidant and antibacterial. These compounds are synthesized commercially by chemical methods that suffer from significant limitations, such as expensive and toxic reagents, solvents, tedious work-up, safety problems. Organic electrosynthesis is recognized as a typical environmentally friendly process with features that many of which cannot be achieved by other methods. Most electroorganic processes are performed under reagentless and mild conditions in one step using efficient and ecofriendly methods and are in agreement with all the principles of green chemistry. Within this field, the use of microreactors in continuous flow is also concurrent with electrochemistry because of its convenient advantages over batch, such as no supporting electrolyte at all, due to the small distance between electrodes; high electrode surface-to-reactor volume ratio, short residence time and etc. This project aims to fabricate an electrochemical flow microreactor by the novel method of photolithography to decrease the interelectrode gap below 100µm. Thus, the resulting device should be suited to the electrosynthesis of a wide range of reactions without a supporting electrolyte solution. Through the present project, we also aim electrochemical synthesis of methylene blue and some new thioethers derivatives for the first time with a facile one-pot and supporting electrolyte-free method. Overall, this method has shown to be a promising tool for electrosynthesis and improving the outcome of standard batch cells. As well as, during the whole of the project the ER will gain maximum knowledge in microfluidic integrated devices and benefit from entrepreneurship skills.

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

BLACK HOLE LAB
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 184 707,84
Address
111 AVENUE VICTOR HUGO
75784 Paris
France

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 184 707,84
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