Mass spectrometric study of the deterioration of polystyrene-based ion-exchangers.
A mass spectrometric study of the aging effects in polystyrene-based ion-exchangers has been made. Fragments in the m/e range 10-70 were examined and attributed to OH(+), H(2)O(+), CO(+), CO(+)(2), supplemented by SO(+) and SO(+)(2) from sulphonic-acid cation-exchangers. Ion-current intensities were found to be dependent on the state of the resin.
Chemical Modification of Polystyrene. VI. Thermal Stability Studies of Sulfonic Acid Resins from Anhydride Modified Polystyrene
Abstract Thermal stabilities of the H form of sulfonic acid resins from polystyrene electrophilically substituted with phthalic anhydride, pyro-mellitic dianhydride, trimellitic anhydride, and cis-1,2,3,6-tetra-hydrophthalic anhydride have been studied and compared by DTA and TGA. Isothermal degradation studies of these resins at 150 ± 10°C for 72 h in air and nitrogen reveal significant changes in IR, decreases in sulfur content, and increases in ion-exchange capacity values. The pH-metric titration characteristics of the pyro-mellitic-dianhydride-modified sulfonated polystyrene after isothermal heating under the above conditions indicate weak acid behavior, in contrast to the strong acid nature of the original resin.
New method for analysis of enzymatic reactions: Thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of aspartame precursor
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. A precursor of aspartame, N-(benzyloxycarbonyl)-l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (Z-APM) was synthesized and hydrolyzed with thermolysin in an aqueous monophasic system. Graphical plotting methods and/or nonlinear regression have been used to analyze enzymatic reactions because of the nonlinearity of enzymatic rate equations. There are, however, problems: the former require accurate measurement of the initial reaction rate and the latter gives no analytical information. The authors proposed a method to solve the nonlinear enzymatic rate equations with respect to the concentration of a product with the Taylor expansion, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism (Murakami, Y., Hirata, M., and Hirata, A., J. Ferment. Bioeng., 82, 246–252, 1996). This solution, however, is complex for practical use. In this paper, a simpler solution to explain the thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of Z-APM is obtained. New methods to determine the kinetic parameters, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism, based on the approximated solution are proposed. The results calculated using the obtained kinetic parameters can satisfactorily explain the experimental results, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed analysis. We must know the relation between the concentrations of substrates and a product, and accurately evaluate of the result obtained using Taylor expansion when we determine the kinetic parameters using our newly developed methods. The methods to determine the kinetic parameters of the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism described in this paper is, however, expected to be applied to general enzymatic reactions.