Nwaneshiudu Ikechukwu C, Schwartz Daniel T
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Box 351750, Seattle, WA 98195-1750 USA.
Biotechnol Biofuels. 2015 May 1;8:72. doi: 10.1186/s13068-015-0254-7. eCollection 2015.
Reducing the amount of water-soluble fermentation inhibitors like furfural is critical for downstream bio-processing steps to biofuels. A theoretical approach for tailoring absorption polymers to reduce these pretreatment contaminants would be useful for optimal bioprocess design.
Experiments were performed to measure aqueous furfural partitioning into polymer resins of 5 bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (epoxy) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Experimentally measured partitioning of furfural between water and PDMS, the more hydrophobic polymer, showed poor performance, with the logarithm of PDMS-to-water partition coefficient falling between -0.62 and -0.24 (95% confidence). In contrast, the fast setting epoxy was found to effectively partition furfural with the logarithm of the epoxy-to-water partition coefficient falling between 0.41 and 0.81 (95% confidence). Flory-Huggins theory is used to predict the partitioning of furfural into diverse polymer absorbents and is useful for predicting these results.
We show that Flory-Huggins theory can be adapted to guide the selection of polymer adsorbents for the separation of low molecular weight organic species from aqueous solutions. This work lays the groundwork for the general design of polymers for the separation of a wide range of inhibitory compounds in biomass pretreatment streams.
减少糠醛等水溶性发酵抑制剂的量对于生物燃料的下游生物处理步骤至关重要。一种定制吸收性聚合物以减少这些预处理污染物的理论方法将有助于优化生物工艺设计。
进行了实验，以测量糠醛在5种双酚A二缩水甘油醚（环氧树脂）和聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS）的聚合物树脂中的水相分配情况。实验测得的糠醛在水和更疏水的聚合物PDMS之间的分配表现不佳，PDMS与水的分配系数的对数在-0.62至-0.24之间（95%置信区间）。相比之下，发现快速固化环氧树脂能有效地分配糠醛，环氧树脂与水的分配系数的对数在0.41至0.81之间（95%置信区间）。弗洛里-哈金斯理论用于预测糠醛在各种聚合物吸附剂中的分配情况，对预测这些结果很有用。
我们表明弗洛里-哈金斯理论可用于指导聚合物吸附剂的选择，以从水溶液中分离低分子量有机物质。这项工作为设计用于分离生物质预处理流中各种抑制性化合物的聚合物奠定了基础。
