Opportunities and challenges for water/organic solvents mixtures and renewable green solvents in organic electrosynthesis

Organic electrosynthesis (OES) is an environmentally friendly methodology that avoids the use of redox toxic reagents and redox chemical waste generation during the synthesis of a wide variety or organic compounds, however, the use of organic solvents remains nowadays an issue of environmental concern. Water should be the choice solvent due to the excellent conductivity of aqueous ionic solutions, nevertheless, the possibility to carry out electrosynthethic reactions in aqueous media is limited by the solubility of organic compounds. Therefore, different strategies have been used to reach the ecological target of decreasing the amount of organic solvent used or to replace them in OES by renewable and more ecological solvents. In this opinion contribution examples where water/organic solvent mixtures or renewable green solvents, employed in electrosynthetic reactions are gathered and discussed to point out about the faced problem and encourage their future use.