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Chemical Engineering

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Doctoral Dissertations

2020

Catalysis

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Development And Characterization Of Robust And Cost-Effective Catalysts For Selective Biomass Upgrading To Fuels And Chemicals By Deoxydehydration, Bryan E. Sharkey Jul 2020

Development And Characterization Of Robust And Cost-Effective Catalysts For Selective Biomass Upgrading To Fuels And Chemicals By Deoxydehydration, Bryan E. Sharkey

Doctoral Dissertations

The use of biomass-derived ligno-cellulose as a possible alternative source of fuels and chemicals to fossil-based hydrocarbons, however, biomass offers many challenges based on processing and its high oxygen content. One promising upgrading route is deoxydehydration, a reaction which combines a deoxygenation by a sacrificial reductant and dehydration in a single step to selectively convert vicinal diols into an olefin. This reaction is highly selective when using homogeneous oxo-rhenium catalysts, which can easily undergo the necessary changes in coordination and oxidation state, however the high cost of rhenium and difficulty of homogeneous catalyst recovery make these catalysts untenable for large …


Engineered Nanoparticles For Site-Specific Bioorthogonal Catalysis: Imaging And Therapy, Riddha Das Mar 2020

Engineered Nanoparticles For Site-Specific Bioorthogonal Catalysis: Imaging And Therapy, Riddha Das

Doctoral Dissertations

Bioorthogonal catalysis offers a strategy for chemical transformations complementary to bioprocesses and has proven to be a powerful tool in biochemistry and medical sciences. Transition metal catalysts (TMCs) have emerged as a powerful tool to execute selective chemical transformations, however, lack of biocompatibility and stability limits their use in biological applications. Incorporation of TMCs into nanoparticle monolayers provides a versatile strategy for the generation of bioorthogonal nanocatalysts known as “nanozymes”. We have fabricated a family of nanozymes using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as scaffolds featuring diverse chemical functional groups for controlled localization of nanozymes in biological environments, providing unique strategies for …