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.