Catalytic Degradation of Chitosan by Supported Heteropoly Acids in Heterogeneous Systems

Several kinds of composite materials with phosphotungstic acid (PTA) as the catalyst were prepared with activated carbon as support, and their structures were characterized. According to the Box-Behnken central combination principle, the mathematical model of the heterogeneous system is established. Based on the single-factor experiments, the reaction temperature, the reaction time, the amount of hydrogen peroxide and the loading capacity of PTA were selected as the influencing factors to study the catalyzed oxidation of hydrogen peroxide and degradation of high molecular weight chitosan. The results of IR showed that the catalyst had a Keggin structure. The results of the mercury intrusion test showed that the pore structure of the supported PTA catalyst did not change significantly, and with the increase of PTA loading, the porosity and pore volume decreased regularly, which indicated that PTA molecules had been absorbed and filled into the pore of activated carbon. The results of Response Surface Design (RSD) showed that the optimum reaction conditions of supported PTA catalysts for oxidative degradation of high molecular weight chitosan by hydrogen peroxide were as follows: reaction temperature was 70 celcius, reaction time was 3.0 h, the ratio of hydrogen peroxide to chitosan was 2.4 and the catalyst loading was 30%. Under these conditions, the yield and molecular weight of water-soluble chitosan were 62.8% and 1290 Da, respectively. The supported PTA catalyst maintained high catalytic activity after three reuses, which indicated that the supported PTA catalyst had excellent catalytic activity and stable performance compared with the PTA catalyst.