Using Data Analysis To Evaluate and Compare Chemical Syntheses

Abstract

We present ChemPager, a freely available tool for systematically evaluating chemical syntheses. By processing and visualizing chemical data, the impact of past changes is uncovered and future work guided. The tool calculates commonly used metrics such as process mass intensity (PMI), Volume–Time Output, and production costs. Also, a set of scores is introduced aiming to measure crucial but elusive characteristics such as process robustness, design, and safety. Our tool employs a hierarchical data layout built on common software for data entry (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) and visualization (Spotfire). With all project data being stored in one place, cross-project comparison and data aggregation becomes possible as well as cross-linking with other data sources or visualizations