Indu Tucker Sidhwani, Gargi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India and R.K. Sharma, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
Gargi College is one of the two colleges in Delhi, out of 65, selected by the University Grants Commission of India as a college with potential for excellence. As Green Chemistry is becoming an important issue in industry, research institutions and the society, students at all levels can benefit from introduction to Green Chemistry. So it was decided that approval be taken from UGC under the ‘cpe' scheme for greening of some of the existing experiments and introducing some new green experiments. This has been done with the aim of introducing Green Chemistry principles and chemical concepts to undergraduate students in an integrated manner. Some of the experiments like ‘Greener Alternatives to Qualitative Analysis of Cations, ‘Preparation of Blue and Green Fluorescent Isomers of tris(8-hydroxyquinolinato)Al(III)' and many more will be discussed. In each experiment, it is shown as to how green methods are following Green Chemistry principles in addition to the chemical concepts. Some of these experiments developed by us are part of an add-on course on Green Chemistry of other colleges, like Miranda House of the University of Delhi. Some of these experiments have also been incorporated in a monograph of Green Chemistry Experiments by Sharma, Sidhwani and Chaudhuri, which was distributed as reading material in the 3rd Indo-US S and T Workshop of Green Chemistry in Delhi, India (7-9 January, 2008). We are also in a process of designing more green inorganic chemistry experiments for the curriculum.