Kinetic characterization for pretreatment of timber varieties and switchgrass using diluted acid hydrolysis

In recent years, growing attention has been devoted to the use of lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock to produce renewable carbohydrates as a source of energy products, including liquid alternatives to fossil fuels. The benefits of developing woody biomass to ethanol technology are to increase the long-term national energy security, reduce fossil energy consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, use renewable rather than depletable resources, and create local jobs. Currently, research is driven by the need to reduce the cost of biomass-ethanol production. One of the preferred methods is to thermochemically pretreat the biomass material and subsequently, enzymatically hydrolyze the pretreated material to fermentable sugars that can then be converted to ethanol using specialized microorganisms. The goals of pretreatment are to remove the hemicellulose fraction from other biomass components, reduce bioconversion time, enhance enzymatic conversion of the cellulose fraction, and, hopefully, obtain a higher ethanol yield. The primary goal of this research is to obtain kinetic detailed data for dilute acid hydrolysis for several timber species from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and switchgrass. These results will be used to identify optimum reaction conditions to maximize production of fermentable sugars and minimize production of non-fermentable byproducts. The structural carbohydrate analysis of the biomass species used in this project was performed using the procedure proposed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Subsequently, dilute acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of biomass, including aspen, basswood, balsam, red maple, and switchgrass, was studied at various temperatures, acid concentrations, and particle sizes in a 1-L well-mixed batch reactor (Parr Instruments, ii Model 4571). 25 g of biomass and 500 mL of diluted acid solution were added into a 1-L glass liner, and then put into the reactor. During the experiment, 5 mL samples were taken starting at 100°C at 3 min intervals until reaching the targeted temperature (160, 175, or 190°C), followed by 4 samples after achieving the desired temperature. The collected samples were then cooled in an ice bath immediately to stop the reaction. The cooled samples were filtered using 0.2 μm MILLIPORE membrane filter to remove suspended solids. The filtered samples were then analyzed using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with a Bio-Rad Aminex HPX-87P column, and refractive index detection to measure monomeric and polymeric sugars plus degradation byproducts. A first order reaction model was assumed and the kinetic parameters such as activation energy and pre-exponential factor from Arrhenius equation were obtained from a match between the model and experimental data. The reaction temperature increases linearly after 40 minutes during experiments. Xylose and other sugars were formed from hemicellulose hydrolysis over this heat up period until a maximum concentration was reached at the time near when the targeted temperature was reached. However, negligible amount of xylose byproducts and small concentrations of other soluble sugars, such as mannose, arabinose, and galactose were detected during this initial heat up period. Very little cellulose hydrolysis yielding glucose was observed during the initial heat up period. On the other hand, later in the reaction during the constant temperature period xylose was degraded to furfural. Glucose production from cellulose was increased during this constant temperature period at later time points in the reaction. The kinetic coefficient governing the generation of xylose from hemicellulose and the generation of furfural from xylose presented a coherent dependence on both temperature and acid concentration. However, no effect was observed in the particle size. There were three types of biomass used in this project; hardwood (aspen, basswood, and red maple), softwood (balsam), and a herbaceous crop (switchgrass). The activation energies and the pre-exponential factors of the timber species and switchgrass were in a range of 49 - 180 kJ/mol and from 7.5x104 - 2.6x1020 min-1, respectively, for the xylose formation model. In addition, for xylose degradation, the activation energies and the preexponential factors ranged from 130 - 170 kJ/mol and from 6.8x1013 - 3.7x1017 min-1, respectively. The results compare favorably with the literature values given by Ranganathan et al, 1985. Overall, up to 92 % of the xylose was able to generate from the dilute acid hydrolysis in this project.

Soft Lewis acid catalyzed cycloisomerization of oxo-alkynes and enynes

In the literature, some transition metal salts have been used as soft Lewis acids to activate alkynes toward nucleophilic attack. For example, Pt(II), Au(I) and Pd(II) catalysts can catalyze cycloisomerization reactions of alkynyl compounds to give a variety of cyclic products. In order to expand the scope of these reactions, in chapter 2 of this dissertation, several alkynyl epoxides were isomerized to cyclic allyl vinyl ethers using PtCl2 as the catalyst. Three of these allyl vinyl ethers were hydrolyzed to 2-hydroxymorpholine derivatives and two were converted to piperidine derivatives by thermal Claisen rearrangement. In order to find more benign and inexpensive catalysts for these types of reactions, in chapter 3 of this dissertation, BiCl3 was used to catalyze the isomerization of eight enynes to pyrrolidine derivatives. This reaction was normally catalyzed by expensive noble metal catalysts, such as Pd(II), Pt(II) and Au(I). All the cyclic products are valuable intermediates in the synthesis of bioactive molecules, these soft Lewis acid catalyzed cycloisomerization may find applications in the synthesis of bioactive molecules.

Syntheses and characterization of monomeric Mo(VI) complexes with bidentate phosphine oxide ligands and dimeric and tetrameric Mo(V) clusters with benzoic acid and phosphinic acid derivatives, containing MoO2, Mo2O2(μ-O)2 and Mo4O4(μ3-O)4

Mo(VI) oxo complexes have been persistently sought after as epoxidation catalysts. Further, Mo(V) oxo clusters of the form M4(µ3-X)4 (M = transition metal, X = O, S) have been rigorously studied due to their remarkable structures and also their usefulness as models for electronic studies. The syntheses and characterizations of new Mo(VI) and Mo(V) oxo complexes have been described in this dissertation. Two new complexes MoO2Cl2Ph2P(O)CH2COOH and MoO2Cl2Ph2P(O)C6H4tBuS(O) were synthesized from reactions of “MoO2Cl2” with ligands Ph2P(O)CH2COOH and Ph2P(O)C6H4tBuS(O). Tetrameric packing arrangements comprised of hydrogen bonds were obtained for the complex MoO2Cl2Ph2P(O)CH2COOH and the ligand Ph2P(O)CH2COOH. Further the stability of an Mo-O bond was preferred over the Mo-S bond even though this resulted in the formation of a more strained seven membered ring. Tetranuclear Mo(V) complexes of the form [Mo4(µ3-O)4(µ-O2PR2)4O4], (PR2 = PPh2, PMe2) were synthesized using reactions of MoO2(acac)2 with diphenyl and dimethyl phosphinic acids, in ethanol. In the crystal structure of these complexes four Mo=O units are interconnected by four triply bridging oxygen atoms and bridging phosphinate ligands. The complex exhibited fourfold symmetry as evidenced by a single 31P NMR peak for the P atoms in the coordinated ligands. Reaction of WO2(acac)2 with Ph2POOH in methanol resulted in a dimeric W(VI) complex [(CH3O)2(O)W(µ-O)( µ-O2PPh2)2W(O)(CH3O)2] which contained a packing disorder in its crystal structure. Similar reactions of MoO2(acac)2 with benzoic acid derivatives resulted in dimeric complexes of the form [Mo2O2(acac)2(µ-O)(µ-OC2H5)(µ-O2CR)] (R = C6H5, (o-OH)C6H4, (p-Cl)C6H4, (2,4-(OH)2)C6H3, (o-I)C6H4) and one tetrameric complex [Mo2O2(acac)2(µ-O)(µ-OC2H5)(µ-O2C)C6H4(p-µ-O2C)Mo2O2(acac)2(µ-O)(µ-OC2H5)] with terephthalic acid. 1H NMR proved very useful in the prediction of the formation of dimers with the substituted benzoic acids, which were also confirmed by elemental analyses. The reductive capability of ethanol proved instrumental in the syntheses of Mo(V) tetrameric and dimeric clusters. Synthetic details, IR, 1H and 31P NMR spectroscopy and elemental analyses are reported for all new complexes. Further, single crystal X-ray structures of MoO2Cl2Ph2P(O)CH2COOH, MoO2Cl2Ph2P(O)C6H4tBuS(O), [Mo4(µ3-O)4(µ-O2PR2)4O4], (PR2 = PPh2, PMe2), [(CH3O)2(O)W(µ-O)( µ-O2PPh2)2W(O)(CH3O)2] and [Mo2O2(acac)2(µ-O)(µ-OC2H5)(µ-O2CR)] (R = C6H5, (o-OH)C6H4) are also presented.

Reaction Control in Quiescent Systems of Free-Radical Retrograde-Precipitation Polymerization

Free-radical retrograde-precipitation polymerization, FRRPP in short, is a novel polymerization process discovered by Dr. Gerard Caneba in the late 1980s. The current study is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the reaction mechanism of the FRRPP and its thermodynamically-driven features that are predominant in controlling the chain reaction. A previously developed mathematical model to represent free radical polymerization kinetics was used to simulate a classic bulk polymerization system from the literature. Unlike other existing models, such a sparse-matrix-based representation allows one to explicitly accommodate the chain length dependent kinetic parameters. Extrapolating from the past results, mixing was experimentally shown to be exerting a significant influence on reaction control in FRRPP systems. Mixing alone drives the otherwise severely diffusion-controlled reaction propagation in phase-separated polymer domains. Therefore, in a quiescent system, in the absence of mixing, it is possible to retard the growth of phase-separated domains, thus producing isolated polymer nanoparticles (globules). Such a diffusion-controlled, self-limiting phenomenon of chain growth was also observed using time-resolved small angle x-ray scattering studies of reaction kinetics in quiescent systems of FRRPP. Combining the concept of self-limiting chain growth in quiescent FRRPP systems with spatioselective reaction initiation of lithography, microgel structures were synthesized in a single step, without the use of molds or additives. Hard x-rays from the bending magnet radiation of a synchrotron were used as an initiation source, instead of the more statistally-oriented chemical initiators. Such a spatially-defined reaction was shown to be self-limiting to the irradiated regions following a polymerization-induced self-assembly phenomenon. The pattern transfer aspects of this technique were, therefore, studied in the FRRP polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAm) and methacrylic acid (MAA), a thermoreversible and ionic hydrogel, respectively. Reaction temperature increases the contrast between the exposed and unexposed zones of the formed microgels, while the irradiation dose is directly proportional to the extent of phase separation. The response of Poly (NIPAm) microgels prepared from the technique described in this study was also characterized by small angle neutron scattering.