Electrochemical control of the conversion of cellulose oligosaccharides into glucose

This paper presents a novel method to convert cellulose oligosaccharides to glucose by using constant-potential electrolysis. Firstly experiments were performed to seek the optimum conditions and catalyst dosage to make the catalytic electrode, and it is found that the most active catalytic electrode (γ-MnO2/graphite/PTFE) can be made using 5% γ-MnO2 as catalysts which is prepared at calcinations temperature of 500 °C and calcinations time of 3 h. Following this, experiments were conducted to find the optimum operation conditions for the maximum glucose yield using the above-developed catalytic electrode. The results show that the maximum glucose yield of 72.4% can be achieved under the following operation conditions: electrolysis potential vs. SEC −1.0 V, pH value of 3 and electrolytic reaction time of 8 h. The cyclic voltammetry performance on MnO2/graphite/PTFE electrode suggests that γ-MnO2 acts not only as electrode material but also as a catalyst. The γ-MnO2 displays high electrocatalytic activity toward the breakage of β-1,4-glycoside bond of oligosaccharides and gives 100% selectivity to glucose.