(256c) Effects of Imprint Molecule and Imprinting Technique On Sugar Adsorption On Nanostructured Molecular Imprinted Silica

Lignocellulosic biomass (e.g. switch grass and corn stover) is an abundant source of raw material for biofuels production. The hydrolyzed products of cellulosic biomass (e.g. glucose, xylose and cellobiose) are known to inhibit the enzymatic saccharification (cellulose depolymerisation) process in cellulosic ethanol production. Separation of the sugar components in the pre-treated biomass will improve ethanol yield by the removal of some of the inhibitants and also generate clean saccharide (e.g. xylose) stream for further conversion to valuable commodity chemicals. This will provide efficient utilization of most of the sugar components in the biomass hydrolysates. Here, molecular imprinting is used to create recognition sites by using surfactants derived from the target molecule to be separated as templates. Sugar based surfactants (e.g. n-octyl-β-D-glucopyranoside and n-octyl-β-D-xylopyranoside) are used in addition to a co-template (CTAB) to obtain nanostructured molecular imprinted (NMI) silica in a sol-gel procedure. After surfactant extraction the silica materials are hypothesized to possess sites that can recognize specific sugar molecules. Molecular imprinted silica materials with incorporated functional groups (e.g. amines and boronic acid) should possess sites with favourable chemical interactions with target molecules in addition to size and shape selectivity. This paper will discuss the properties of NMI- and functionalized NMI- silica materials. The amount of sugar adsorbed on imprinted materials will be compared based on imprinting technique and imprint molecule in addition to the thermodynamics (analyzed using ITC) of sugar binding.