Immobilization of Horseradish Peroxidase for Phenol Degradation

The use of enzymes to degrade environmental pollutants has received wide attention as an emerging green approach. Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) can efficiently catalyze the degradation of phenol in the environment; however, free HRP exhibits poor stability and temperature sensitivity and is easily deactivated, which limit its practical applications. In this study, to improve their thermal stability, HRP enzymes were immobilized on mesoporous molecular sieves (Al-MCM-41). Specifically, Al-MCM-41(W) and Al-MCM-41(H) were prepared by modifying the mesoporous molecular sieve Al-MCM-41 with glutaraldehyde and epichlorohydrin, respectively, and used as carriers to immobilize HRP on their surface, by covalent linkage, to form the immobilized enzymes HRP@Al-MCM-41(W) and HRP@Al-MCM-41(H). Notably, the maximum reaction rate of HRP@Al-MCM-41(H) was increased from 2.886 × 105 (free enzyme) to 5.896 × 105 U/min-1, and its half-life at 50 °C was increased from 745.17 to 1968.02 min; the thermal stability of the immobilized enzyme was also significantly improved. In addition, we elucidated the mechanism of phenol degradation by HRP, which provides a basis for the application of this enzyme to phenol degradation.

Room-temperature production of bio-based aldehydes from vegetable oil-derived epoxide via H2WO4@Al-MCM-41 as recyclable catalyst

The oxidative cleavage of vegetable oils and their derivatives to produce bio-based aldehydes is a potentially useful process, although the aldehyde products are readily oxidized to carboxylic acids and thus seldom obtained in high yields. The present study developed a room-temperature method for the synthesis of bio-aldehydes via the oxidative cleavage of vegetable oil-derived epoxides, using H₂WO₄ as the catalyst, H₂O₂ as the oxidant, and t-BuOH as the solvent. Reactions were carried out at temperatures ranging from 25 to 35 °C for 3.5–10.5 h, and provided >99% conversion and >90% aldehyde yield. In particular, an approximately 97% yield was obtained at 25 °C after 10.5 h. As the reaction proceeded, the H₂WO₄ dissolved to form a W-containing anion. Several mesoporous Al-MCM-41 materials having different Si/Al ratios were hydrothermally synthesized and used as adsorbents to recover the catalyst by adsorbing these anions. The adsorption capacity of the Al-MCM-41 was found to increase with decreases in the Si/Al ratio. The Al-MCM-41 had little effect on the oxidative cleavage reaction at 25 °C, and thus could be directly added to the reaction system. The excellent anion adsorption performance of the Al-MCM-41 greatly improved the reusability of the H₂WO₄ catalyst. When using the Al-MCM-41 with the best adsorption performance, there was no significant decrease in the activity of the catalyst following five reuses.

>90% bio-aldehydes yield was obtained from H₂WO₄-catalyzed epoxy vegetable oil at room-temperature; Al-MCM-41 was added to recover catalyst via adsorption.