Prof. Dr. Siegfried R. Waldvogel, Department of Chemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz/Germany, https://www.aksw.uni-mainz.de/prof-dr-s-r-waldvogel/ 

The direct use of electrochemistry for the generation of reactive intermediates can have major advantages towards conventional synthetic strategies. Compared to the action other sustainable approaches such as photochemistry, the overall energetic balance is superior and allows scalable conversions. Less or no reagent waste is generated and new reaction pathways are accessible. In order to exploit the electricity driven conversions for synthetic purposes and to install unique selectivity two modern approaches will be outlined:

1)    Exploiting persistent pollutants such as highly chlorinated waste stream from the past can be converted in technically relevant chemicals. 

2)    SO2 represents a significant component in flue gas and can be electrochemically upcycled in sulfonamides, sulfamides, etc. 

3)    This technique can also be used to access a variety of technically important compounds in a short cut of several steps.

The working horse to identify suitable electrolytic conditions is the electrosynthetic screening approach. This strategy gives also rise to fast optimization and subsequent scale-up.

Organising unit: Institute of Organic Chemistry