Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

6-30-1969

Degree Name

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Chemical Engineering

First Advisor

Gerson L. Ram

Second Advisor

[illegible signature]

Third Advisor

Avner Shilman

Abstract

In 1952, Consden and Stanier published a report on paper ionophoresis of sugars in which they showed experimentally an increase in mobility of sugars with increasing pH in borate buffers. The object of the experiments in this thesis was to determine if this finding was also true of thin layer plates, there being no published literature on similar experiments using thin layer ionophoresis.

Glass plates 20 cm. x 20 cm. were coated with a 300 micron layer of cellulose powder and dried at 105° C. for one hour. They were then stored in an airtight tin box until ready for use. Other substrates including silica gel with and without added boric acid, aluminum oxide, cellulose powder with added boric acid, and cellulose acetate were tried but with little success. Cellulose powder without any binder proved to be most satisfactory for these experiments.

A plate was sprayed with borate buffer of the desired pH prepared in the laboratory, placed on a water-cooled platform in an airtight ionophoresis apparatus and then spotted along a vertical line approximately two inches from the left edge of the plate with 5 microliters of a 1% aqueous sugar solution. Strips of filter paper moistened with the buffer overlapped each edge of the plate and connected it to separate compartments containing buffer. Electrodes within the two buffer compartments completed the circuit to an external power supply. On applying a known voltage, the current produced caused the negatively-charged sugar borate complex ions to be swept along in A stream of buffer ions toward the anode. After a specified time interval, the plate was removed, dried at 105° C. and sprayed with naphthoresorcinol. Further heating at 105° C. produced a color reaction by which the sugars were identified and their mobility calculated from the point of application. Other developing agents such as ammoniacal silver nitrate, concentrated sulfuric acid, and aniline hydrogen phthalate were tried, but rejected in favor of naphthoresorcinol which not only detected the sugar spots but also distinguished between keto and aldo hexoses by color, violet and blue respectively.

Based on the results of some eighty experiments representing ten sugars at six different pH levels, the hypothesis of increased mobility with increasing pH of the borate buffer was verified for thin layer plates. The mobility was not as great on the plates as on paper; however, the position of the sugars relative to each other was graphically similar for paper and for thin layer ionophoresis.

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