Background: During the pretreatment of biomass feedstocks and subsequent conditioning prior to saccharification, many toxic compounds are produced or introduced which inhibit microbial growth and in many cases, production of ethanol. An understanding of the toxic effects of compounds found in hydrolysate is critical to improving sugar utilization and ethanol yields in the fermentation process. In this study, we established a useful tool for surveying hydrolysate toxicity by measuring growth rates in the presence of toxic compounds, and examined the effects of selected model inhibitors of aldehydes, organic and inorganic acids (along with various cations), and alcohols on growth of Zymomonas mobilis 8b (a ZM4 derivative) using glucose or xylose as the carbon source. Results: Toxicity strongly correlated to hydrophobicity in Z. mobilis, which has been observed in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae for aldehydes and with some exceptions, organic acids. We observed Z. mobilis 8b to be more tolerant to organic acids than previously reported, although the carbon source and growth conditions play a role in tolerance. Growth in xylose was profoundly inhibited by monocarboxylic organic acids compared to growth in glucose, whereas dicarboxylic acids demonstrated little or no effects on growth rate in either substrate. Furthermore, cations can be ranked in order of their toxicity, Ca
The reversion reactions of glucose in mildly acidic aqueous solutions have been studied, and the kinetics of conversion to disaccharides has been modeled. The experiments demonstrate that, at high sugar loadings, up to 12 wt % of the glucose can be converted into reversion products. The reversion products observed are primarily disaccharides; no larger oligosaccharides were observed. Only disaccharides linked to the C1 carbon of one of the glucose residues were observed. The formation of 1,6-linked disaccharides was favored, and alpha-linked disaccharides were formed at higher concentrations than beta-linked disaccharides. This observation can be rationalized on the basis of steric effects. At temperatures >140 degrees C, the disaccharides reach equilibrium with glucose and the reversion reaction competes with dehydration reactions to form 5-hydroxymethylfurfural. As a result, disaccharide formation reaches a maximum at reaction times <10 min and decreases with time. At temperatures <130 degrees C, disaccharide formation reaches a maximum at reaction times >30 min. As expected, disaccharide formation exhibits a second-order dependence upon glucose concentration. Levoglucosan formation is also observed; because it shows a first-order dependence upon glucose concentration, its formation is more significant at low concentrations (10 mg mL(-1)), whereas disaccharide formation dominates at high concentrations (200 mg mL(-1)). Experiments conducted using glucose and its disaccharides were calibrated with readily available standards. The kinetic parameters for hydrolysis of some glucodisaccharides could be compared to published literature values. From these experiments, the kinetics and activation energies for the reversion reactions have been calculated. The rate parameters can be used to model the formation of the disaccharides as a function of reaction time and temperature. A new and detailed picture of the molecular mechanism of these industrially important reversion reactions has been developed.
Density functional theory (BLYP and B3LYP) and the polarized continuum model (PCM-UA0) for solvation have been used to investigate the effect of bite angle (P-M-P) of diphosphine ligands and the dihedral or twist angle between diphosphine ligands on the hydride donor abilities of Ni, Pd, and Pt [HM(diphosphine) 2 ] + complexes. It is found that an increased bite angle for a given transition metal atom results in poorer hydride donor abilities. However, hydride donor abilities for these complexes also decrease as the size of the alkyl side groups on the phosphorus atom increase (Et > Me > H) and with the length of the metal phosphorus bond (Ni > Pd = Pt). These trends correlate with an increase in the twist angle between the two diphosphine ligands, which increases from 0°for a square-planar configuration to 90°for a tetrahedral geometry. Shorter M-P bonds, larger substituents on the diphosphine ligands, and larger bite angles all result in increased steric interactions between diphosphine ligands and larger dihedral or twist angles between the diphosphine ligands. The twist angle correlates much more strongly with hydride donor abilities than do bite angles alone. As the twist angle increases, the hydride donor ability decreases in a linear fashion. A frontier orbital analysis has been carried out, and it is shown that the hydride donor ability of [HM(diphosphine) 2 ] + complexes is largely determined by the energy of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of the corresponding [M(diphosphine) 2 ] 2+ complex.
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