Sugar surfactants critical micelle concentration

Various authors have shown that non-ionic surfactants have a beneficial effect on the hydrolysis of cellulosic and lignocellulosic substrates, whereas anionic and cationic surfactants alone interfere negatively (Castanon and Wilke, 1981 Helle et al, 1993 Park et al, 1992 Ooshima et al., 1986 Traore and Buschle-Diller, 1999 Ueda el al., 1994 Eriksson el al., 2002). Increases in the amount of reducing soluble sugars and substrate conversion were reported. The effect depends on the substrate and is not observed for soluble substrates, such as carboxymethylcellulose or cellobiose. Nonionic surfactants increased the initial rate of hydrolysis of Sigmacell 100, and when they were added later in the process they were less effective (Helle et al, 1993). They same authors found also that the addition of cellulose increases the critical micelle concentration of the surfactant, which indicates that the surfactant adsorbs to the substrate. Surfactants are more effective at lower enzyme loads and reduce the amount of adsorbed protein (Castanon and Wilke, 1981 Ooshima et al, 1986 Helle et al, 1993 Eriksson et al., 2002) which can be used to increase desorption of cellulase from the cellulosic substrate (Otter et al., 1989). Anyhow, the use of surfactants to enhance desorption of cellulases from textile substrates in order to recover and recycle cellulases was not successful (Azevedo et al., 2002b). 

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