Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Interfacial Engineering Of Biomass Hydrolysis By Cellulase Enzymes And Mechanistic Modeling Of Hydrolysis Of Cellulose Substrates, Ravinder Kumar Garlapalli

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

Lignocellulosic biomass is a sustainable and renewable energy resource that can be converted to fuels and other commodity chemicals, but this conversion is currently limited by its recalcitrance to enzymatic degradation. Because of this recalcitrance, the major challenges in the commercialization of enzymatic hydrolysis processes are the relatively low hydrolysis rates, limited cellulose conversion under some conditions, and high cost of enzymes.

Enzymatic hydrolysis is influenced by the structure of the biomass after pretreatment and the mode of enzyme action, but has also been shown to be enhanced by surfactant additives. The objective of this work was to elucidate the …

Mixed Surfactant Systems: Thermodynamics And Applications In Metal Oxide Imprinting, Suvid Joshi

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

In this work we study mixtures of cationic surfactant (CTAB) and sugar based surfactant(s) (octyl beta-D-glucopyranoside (C8G1), dodecyl maltoside (C12G2) and octyl beta-D-xylopyranoside (C8X1)) to understand the non-ideal thermodynamic behavior of the mixtures of cationic and non-ionic surfactants in water and synthesis of imprinted materials. The thermodynamics of micellization, mixing and dilution of these systems are studied using Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) and the experimental data obtained are modeled with a pseudo-phase separation model with non-ideal mixing described by regular solution theory. It is shown that a model accounting for enthalpy of demicellization and enthalpy of dilution based on McMillan-Mayer …