Influence of impurities of the transitional metals Fe, Ni, and Co on the hydrolysis kinetics of BH− 4 ions in alkaline solutions

The influence of small amounts of the Fe, Co, and Ni impurities on the spontaneous hydrolytic process of borohydride was studied within a temperature range of 60–100°C. The object under study was a simulated solution containing 9.53 M of OH− ions and 0.14 M of BH− 4 ions, used as a fuel for borohydride fuel cells. The rate constant k of borohydride hydrolysis for a small amount of impurities at different temperature was estimated. The lowest non-accelerating concentrations of the impurities were established (∼10 ppm for iron; ∼1 ppm for cobalt). The strongest accelerating effect on the hydrolysis of BH− 4 ions was rendered by nickel impurities: self-hydrolysis was accelerated by 1.2 times for 1 ppm Ni. The ambiguous trend of the kinetic curves does not allow to accurately estimate the activation energy; however, the increased temperature enhances the catalytic effect of hydrolysis acceleration according to Arrhenius’ equation.

Sensopeptidomic Kinetic Approach Combined with Decision Trees and Random Forests to Study the Bitterness during Enzymatic Hydrolysis Kinetics of Micellar Caseins

Protein hydrolysates are, in general, mixtures of amino acids and small peptides able to supply the body with the constituent elements of proteins in a directly assimilable form. They are therefore characterised as products with high nutritional value. However, hydrolysed proteins display an unpleasant bitter taste and possible off-flavours which limit the field of their nutrition applications. The successful identification and characterisation of bitter protein hydrolysates and, more precisely, the peptides responsible for this unpleasant taste are essential for nutritional research. Due to the large number of peptides generated during hydrolysis, there is an urgent need to develop methods in order to rapidly characterise the bitterness of protein hydrolysates. In this article, two enzymatic hydrolysis kinetics of micellar milk caseins were performed for 9 h. For both kinetics, the optimal time to obtain a hydrolysate with appreciable organoleptic qualities is 5 h. Then, the influence of the presence or absence of peptides and their intensity over time compared to the different sensory characteristics of hydrolysates was studied using heat maps, random forests and regression trees. A total of 22 peptides formed during the enzymatic proteolysis of micellar caseins and influencing the bitterness the most were identified. These methods represent simple and efficient tools to identify the peptides susceptibly responsible for bitterness intensity and predict the main sensory feature of micellar casein enzymatic hydrolysates.

The Effect of Graphite and Fe2O3 Addition on Hydrolysis Kinetics of Mg-Based Hydrogen Storage Materials

In this paper, graphite and Fe2O3 are introduced into MgH2 powder by the method of hydrogenation after magnetic grinding. Hydrogen storage materials which composite of MgH2–5 wt.% C and MgH2–5 wt.% C–5 wt.% Fe2O3 are successfully prepared. The physical structure of these materials was analyzed and characterized by XRD, SEM, etc. Furthermore, the influence of graphite and Fe2O3 on the hydrolysis of MgH2 was systematically investigated. The results show that MgH2–C–Fe2O3 composite powder has the fastest hydrogen release rate in municipal drinking water and the highest conversion rate. Graphite and Fe2O3 can effectively reduce the activation energy of the hydrolysis reaction of MgH2 and improve the hydrolysis kinetics of MgH2. The synergistic effect of the coaddition of graphite and Fe2O3 can significantly increase the hydrolysis conversion rate of MgH2 and improve the hydrolysis kinetics.