Thiol Modified Fe@Sio 2 As an Effective Recycling Magnetic Platform for Mesp

Thiol
modified Fe@SiO₂ as an effective recycling magnetic platform for mESP

Zakary
Ford¹, Tun Yun Hsueh², Ruben Michael Ceballos²,
Lauren F. Greenlee¹

Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering,
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,

AR 72701, USA

Department of Biological Sciences, University of
Arkansas, Fayetteville,

AR 72701, USA

Cellulosic
ethanol, a “second-generation” biofuel, has yet to become cost competitive with
fossil fuels on a commercial scale. To lower the cost of biofuel, two steps within
the ethanol production process have been studied thoroughly: pretreatment and
enzymatic hydrolysis. In general, pretreatment aims to prime the cellulose
network for sugar reducing enzymes by disrupting cellulose, hemicellulose, and
lignin interactions. The second area of research focus comprises of the
discovery of novel enzymes, the use of enzymes "cocktails,"
engineering of enzymes, and the use of platforms. Through prior work, results
have shown that the utilization of a mobile enzyme sequestration platform
(mESP) developed from a NASA prototype scaffold known as a “rosettazyme” mESPs
are useful in enhancing sugar reduction efficiency on acid- and alkaline-
pretreated cellulosic feedstock. However, without an efficient recycling
process, the technology will still not result in lower costs and thus will not
contribute to a cost-competitive biofuel. Therefore, the focus of this study is
to develop a suitable nanoparticle technology to efficiently recover mESPs.

In
this presentation, we will show recent results on continued work to develop
thiol functionalized Fe@SiO₂ core\shell nanoparticles obtained
through co-precipitation and sol-gel methods. In particular, we will discuss
the progress of obtaining characterization data from
transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS),
and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showing successful attachment of SiO₂
and thiol to the surface of the Fe nanoparticle. Furthermore, we will discuss
our efforts to determine the efficiency of attachment of our nanoparticle to mESP
subunits.