Ionic liquids have been proved to be of value pretreating biomass, and thus improving saccaharification yields. However, ionic liquids show different capabilities of solubilizing cellulose. In addition, aqueous ionic liquids solutions reduce the enzymatic activity of cellulases preventing an efficient saccaharification. Therefore, an efficient screening platform is necessary to identify ionic liquids that are less prone to inhibit the cellulase enzymatic activity but still possess good cellulose solubilization capabilities. In this context, the quantum chemistry-based COSMO-RS method has been shown to be an effective tool to predict cellulose solubility in ionic liquids. However, no literature reports exist which correlates COSMO-RS parameters with cellulase activity in aqueous solutions of ionic liquids. In the present work, the activity of cellulase was measured in different aqueous solution of ionic liquids (more than 20) and the results were correlated with the derived COSMO-RS parameters including sigma profiles, sigma potentials, misfit, H-bonding and van der Waals interaction energy of the systems in question. The results will be of value to construct a model that can predict cellulase activity in different ionic liquids.

Prediction of cellulase activity in ionic liquids using COSMO-RS

256th National Meeting (2018)

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