High-spin ground-state polyradicals are an important platform due to their potential applications in magnetic and spintronic devices. However, a low high-to-low spin energy gap limits the population of the high-spin...
Liquid-phase heterogeneous catalysis
using zeolites is important
for biomass conversion to fuels and chemicals. There is a substantial
body of work on gas-phase sorption in zeolites with different topologies;
however, studies investigating the diffusion of complex molecules
in liquid medium into zeolitic nanopores are scarce. Here, we present
a molecular dynamics study to understand the sorption and diffusion
of aqueous β-d-glucose into β-zeolite silicate
at T = 395 K and P = 1 bar. Through
2-μs-long molecular dynamics trajectories, we reveal the role
of the solvent, the kinetics of the pore filling, and the effect of
the water model on these properties. We find that the glucose and
water loading is a function of the initial glucose concentration.
Although the glucose concentration increases monotonically with the
initial glucose concentration, the water loading exhibits a nonmonotonic
behavior. At the highest initial concentration (∼20 wt %),
we find that the equilibrium loading of glucose is approximately five
molecules per unit cell and displays a weak dependence on the water
model. Glucose molecules follow a single-file diffusion in the nanopores
due to confinement. The dynamics of glucose and water molecules slows
significantly at the interface. The average residence time for glucose
molecules is an order of magnitude larger than that in the bulk solution,
while it is about twice as large for the water molecules. Our simulations
reveal critical molecular details of the glucose molecule’s
local environment inside the zeolite pore relevant to catalytic conversion
of biomass to valuable chemicals.
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