IUPAC ICGC-2
2nd International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry
14–19 September 2008, Moscow - St. Petersburg, Russia

The 2nd International IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry (ICGC-2) was held from 14–19 September 2008 aboard the ship "Alexander Radishev," traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Russia. The conference was the second in series, started by very successive 1st International IUPAC Conference on Sustainable-Green Chemistry that was held in Dresden, Germany in August 2006.

The IUPAC ICGC-2 was organized under the auspices of IUPAC, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Foundation of Basic Researches, Russian Ministry of Education and Science, and M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Local organizers were Chemistry Department of Moscow M.V. Lomonosov State University, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Scientific-Educational Center "Sustainable-Green Chemistry."

The opening ceremony was held in the Aula of new Intellectual Center – Fundamental Library of M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University. The Opening Ceremony was held together with other IUPAC sponsored event – XIV Conference of International Humic Society. More than 700 peoples participated in the opening ceremony, including students and post-graduate students, scientists, engineers, publishers etc. The opening ceremony included speeches by Prof. V.Lunin, Chairman of the Organizing Committee; Prof. V.Kholstov, the Head of the Department of Realization of Convention Liabilities of RF Ministry of Industry and Commerce; E.Balashov, Vice-Head of the Department of Industrial Policy of Moscow city; P.Blum and J.Weber (former and acting Presidents of International Humic Society). Prof. N. Tarasova welcomed participants as Representative of IUPAC, as Vice-Head of Russian Mendeleev Society and from Russian Academy of Sciences; she read out the welcoming remarks of Jung-Il Jin, IUPAC President. In this welcoming words he said "This conference is one of about 30 international conferences sponsored annually by IUPAC, but the topics to be discussed in this conference have a special significance to the healthy, sustainable development of the world." Academic chorus of Moscow University completed the Opening Ceremony by the songs of different countries.

Immediately after the opening ceremony two plenary lectures were presented. First was the lecture V.N. Charushin, O.N. Chupakhin "Principles of Green Chemistry in Organic Synthesis", presented by Professor, the Head of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences V.Charushin (Russia). Using the raw of bright examples he showed as the principles of green chemistry can state the basement for the development of new effective ways for organic synthesis with reduced number of steps. It helps to save resources including materials and energy. One of the possible routes is the reaction of nucleophilic H-substitution, whish helps to avoid the use of environmentally hazardous halogenated intermediates and reduce the number of reaction steps by direct substitution of H in organic molecule by target functional group.

Second plenary lection on the first session was presented by D.Bosell (Tennessee University, USA) «The Prospective of the use of lignine and lignine-like materials as the source of high value products".

Then the participants went to the ship "Alexander Radishev" and started traveling through the chain of rivers, lakes and channels from Moscow to StPetersburg. Each day two oral sessions were organized and ordinary one stop for excursions to different ancient Russian towns or monasteries took place. Thanks to being all together on the ship traveling through nice landscapes of Russian North the participants became like a family in spite of cloudy and cold weather warmed with yellow lives of autumn trees and warmth of hearts.

During the preparation period many topics were announced for the formation of the conference program. But according to the interests of future participants the program was changed a little so the final program included the sections listed above:

1. Environmentally safe reagents and synthesis routes
2. Heterogeneous catalysis
3. Homogeneous and enzyme catalysis
4. Prospective environmentally safe energy sources
5. Use of renewables in the chemical processes
6. Environmentally safe technologies of chemical products
7. Education in the field of green chemistry

The conference included 6 plenary lectures, 10 keynote lectures, 37 oral presentation and 120 poster presentations. There were organized also two round tables. First round-table discussion organized by Prof. Hemda Garelick (Prof of Environmental Science and Public Health Education, Dept of Natural Sciences, Middlesex University, London, UK) was aimed to examine the environmental context for "Green Chemistry" and address its relationship with the subject area of "Environmental Chemistry". The second round-table discussion was organized by Prof. Valery Lunin (Chemistry Department of M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University) and devoted to the discussion of theoretical and practical aspects of the use of supercritical fluids in chemistry and technology.

The topic the use of supercritical fluids, ionic liquids and both types of reaction media, as well as reactions without solvents, dominated on the conference and was mentioned on near all sessions. For example plenary lecture of Prof. Buxing Han (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) "Green solvents properties and their application in green chemistry" summarized the valuable work joining the use of supercritical fluids together with ionic liquids. Similar direction was elucidated in keynote lecture of Dr. Jurgen Klankermayer and Prof. Walter Leitner (Institut fur Technische und Makromolekulare Chemie, RWTH Aachen University, Germany) "New catalytic systems for selective hydrogenation".

Another important direction was the use of renewables for the production of fuels, as in plenary lecture of Prof. V.I. Bukhtiyarov (together with V.A. Yakovlev and V.N. Parmon, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Russia) "Catalysis for biofuels production" and keynote lecture of Prof. V.Tretjakov "Industrial catalysts in the catalysis for the environment", for medicine production as in oral presentation of Prof. S.Rashidova (with co-authors, Institute of Polymer Chemistry and Physics, Uzbekistan Academy of sciences, Uzbekistan) "Research of anti-bacterial properties of chitosan and its derivatives in relation to various microorganisms", agrochemicals, and other substances.

Catalysis presented the third general direction. Besides from listed above lectures, catalysis in green chemistry was presented by keynote lecture of Prof. A.Stakheev (Zelinski Institute of Organic Chemistry of RAS, Russia) "Modern trends in the development of catalytic after treatment systems for lean-burn and diesel engines" and other oral and poster presentations.

All mentioned above directions were joined together in the section devoted to green synthesis routes and green reagents. The keynote lectures of Cinzia Chiappe "DABCO-based ionic liquids: properties and applications" (Department of Bioorganic Chemistry and Biopharmacy, University of Pisa, ITALY) and O.P.Parenago (Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of RAS, Russia) "Ecological problems of lubricants chemistry" set the fashion to all session. It was continued by interesting presentations of Iran, Chinese, Spanish, Russian and many other participants.

Very important discussion on Educational section includes mostly participants from Russia, USA and United Kingdom. It was opened by the plenary lecture of Prof. Mary Kirchhoff (EPA, USA) "Green chemistry education: the shades of green" and keynote lecture of Prof. Natalia Tarasova (D.Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Institute of Chemistry and Problems of Sustainable Development, Russia) Green Chemistry as responsible stewardship". New approaches and practical methods of education in this field was presented by Prof. Z.Lerman (Columbia College Chicago, USA), Prof. Hemda Garelick (School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University UK,), Prof. P.R. Peoples (ACS Green Chemistry Institute, USA) and other participants.

The discussion about environmentally safe energy sources was started by the Plenary lecture Hiroyuki NISHIDE (Waseda University, Japan) "Radical Polymers Leading to Totally Organic-Based and Environmentally Benign Batteries" and continued on oral and poster sessions. The poster presentation of K. Koshika (in cooperation with K. Oyaizu, K. Masao, H. Nishide, Waseda University, Japan) "Hydrophilic radical polymer electrode-based secondary battery: GC compatability evaluation" was awarded by IUPAC prize for young scientists.

Another IUPAC prize was given to Vitaly Skorkin (Chemistry Department of M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University) for poster presentation "Dendrimer-based catalysts for hydrogenation of conjugate dienes" (co-authors A.L. Maximov, E.A. Karakhanov).

The participants represented many countries of the world including Russia, China, Japan, USA, UK, Italy, Iran, Indonesia, Argentina, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Canada, Greece, Bulgaria, India, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Algeria, Romania, Ukraine, Korea, Brazil, France, Denmark, Thailand, Taiwan, Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Nigeria, Slovenia, and Ghana. It should be noted that especial interest to the conference was expressed by Chinese, Indian and Iran scientists. It is the good sign, because now China and India are growing industrial economics and there is global need for these countries actively use the principle of green chemistry in everyday work, the same way as many European countries.

The activities of IUPAC in the field of Green Chemistry were presented on the conference by the Head of Division III Prof. Pietro Tundo (INCA and Ca Foscari University, Venice, Italy) and Prof. B.Han, the Head of IUPAC Subcommittee on Green Chemistry. Also the Subcommittee meeting was held during the conference. The decision was made to held the next 3 IUPAC Conference on Green Chemistry in Canada in 2010, in accordance with the proposal made by P.Jessop (Canada), the representative of future Organizing Committee. On the closing ceremony Prof. P.Tundo announced the venue and invited all participants to attend the coming event.

The Conference produced the wide resonance on massmedia. Besides of short articles published in Russian newspapers Poisk, Moscovskii Komsomolets, Moscovskii Universitet, Russian internet-resources http://www.chem.msu.ru, http://www.greenchemistry.ru, more deep analytical articles will be published soon in Catalytic Bulletin, the journal Ecology and Life, Chemistry and Life and other popular editions.

All participants received the Book of Abstracts and CD. The abstracts are also available in the web http://www.greenchemistry.ru/conferences/files/icgc2008/index.htm

The organizers wish to thank the M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Foundation for Basic Researches, and DuPont, Shevron, Dow Chemicals, Thar Instruments (USA), Coca-Cola for their invaluable sponsorship and financial assistance.

The conference also received financial support from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. IUPAC’s sponsorship is greatly appreciated; it allowed the conference to earn IUPAC’s academic recognition and gave it international scope. A special issue of the the Pure and Applied Chemistry will be prepared in the nearest future.

The recommendations from the workshops are summarized as follows:

• urge all chemists and technologists in the world to use the approach of green chemistry in everyday work;
• call to educational community to disseminate the ideas of green chemistry between school and high-school students and all levels of population;
• include green chemistry seeds and elements into basic courses of chemistry and natural science taught in schools and high schools;
• to perform wide activity to enlighten all levels of population through lectures, publications in mass-media about the role of green chemistry in sustainable development of the world.
• To start the creation of green collaboration in the countries of former Great Silk Way (Europe, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, India, Iran, China) to deep scientific and educational collaboration in the field of green chemistry.