Pectin is a complex polysaccharide in plant cell wall. It is now widely used in food and nutrition industry as GRAS material. The degree of methoxylation (DM) of commercial pectins are usually 60~80% determined by both plant maturity and extraction procedure. Herein we processed commercial pectin via solid-in-liquid esterification to obtain an ultrahigh methoxylated pectin (UHMP) with high DM of ~92% and low molecular weight (MW) of ~150kDa (Fig.1). The high DM contributed the great improvement in hydrophobicity of UHMP. UHMP can reduce water surface tension from 71.63±0.01 mN/m to 55.617±0.26 mN/m, which was 3-times as efficient as normal citrus pectin. UHMP also showed lower surface excess (1.69±0.17 μmol/m2) and higher molecular area (0.99±0.10 nm2) in comparison to citrus pectin. Furthermore, UHMP can be homogeneously dispersed in water at the concentration smaller than its critical micelle concentration (CMC, 0.8 g/L) but self-assemble into micelles when its concentration was increased to over CMC (Fig.1), thus it has potential as the surfactant. As seen in Table 1, UHMP had a good degreasing efficiency of >80% at the conentration< CMC (measurement conducted according to Chinese National Standard GB 9985-2000), while the activity was significantly improved to ~95% after enzymatic hydrolysis of UHMP to obtain UHMP of smaller size (~25 kDa). In contrast, citrus pectin showed rapid activity decrease due to its weak hydrophobicity. This study suggested that this modified pectin is a potential condidate as a novel bio-surfactant. 

Surficial activity of ultrahigh methoxylated pectin and its potential application as dish detergent

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.