Rhamnolipid biosurfactants produced predominantly by strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa have been shown to effectively complex heavy metals in a structure that utilizes a flexible binding pocket around the metal cation. This unique structural motif allows efficient but selective binding for toxic metals as well as high value metals such as the rare earth elements which might be used to avail in remediation or critical element harvesting. Although initial work has been done in these areas using the biosynthesized native monorhamnolipids, no work has been done to explore the possibility of further exploiting this structural carbohydrate-based motif in chemically synthesized materials to produce more effective complexants. In this work, the synthesis of new glycolipid-based materials has been accomplished with the goal of producing low cost structural analogues of the native rhamnolipids with better optimized metal binding strength, geometry and selectivity for environmentally important or high value metals. New glycolipids based on different sugar headgroups including rhamnose, glucose, xylose and arabinose have been synthesized to investigate the effect of the nature of different sugars on the complexation behavior of these materials. These materials are characterized both for their green surfactant properties (critical micelle concentration, aggregation number, aggregate shape and size) and their metal complexation ability for two toxic heavy metals, Pb2+ and Cd2+, and two rare earth metals of strategic importance, Nd3+ and La3+.

Synthesis, characterization, and heavy metal metal binding properties of new sugar-based glycolipid surfactants

252nd National Meeting (2016)

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