Pyrolysis in Biotechnology

Investigation of proteinaceous paint layers, composed of egg yolk and lead white, exposed to fire-related effects

“…Conversely, pyrolyzed proteins are challenging to detect, as the amino acids (their building blocks) yield rapidly-eluting, volatile fragments, which are difficult to analyse with gas chromatography 33 . Therefore, it was especially important to find specific markers that enable the detection of certain amino acids 24 , 33 , 34 . Aromatic amino acids can be reliably detected with pyrolysis-GC–MS, as their pyrolysis degradation products are well-separated by the chromatography column and captured by the mass detector, and therefore it is possible to accurately reconstitute the information about the original amino acids’ presence.…”

“…Aromatic amino acids can be reliably detected with pyrolysis-GC–MS, as their pyrolysis degradation products are well-separated by the chromatography column and captured by the mass detector, and therefore it is possible to accurately reconstitute the information about the original amino acids’ presence. The indole type of compounds are characteristic decomposition products of tryptophan; benzyl cyanide, toluene and styrene can be used to detect phenylalanine, and the sum of the phenol and substituted phenols can be used for the detection of tyrosine 24 , 34 , 35 . Therefore, in Supplementary Tables S1 and S2 , it is shown that the phenol, cresol, dimethyl phenol, methoxy phenol and ethyl phenol reaction products are obtained from the pyrolysis of tyrosine; indole and methyl-indole are characteristic for tryptophan; while toluene, styrene and benzyl nitrile come from phenylalanine.…”

“…The incorporation of a pyrolysis unit into the combined gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry system enabled a study of the non-soluble, non-volatile, often solid-state samples, as it can turn them into volatile products by heating them up to very high temperatures (up to 1400 °C) in a very short time (8 ms), in an inert atmosphere, causing degradation of the sample into volatile products. The pyrolysis reaction products are characteristic of the original structure of the sample 24 . Rapid heating was used to decrease the risk of secondary reactions.…”

Faecal sludge pyrolysis: Understanding the relationships between organic composition and thermal decomposition

“…Samples in this study were dried at >100°C implying that any secondary and tertiary protein structures were previously destroyed through denaturing, leaving polypeptide chains of amino acids (Garrett & Grisham, 2013). During pyrolysis, polypeptides mainly decompose through decarboxylation and condensation reactions (Ratcliff et al, 1974;Moldoveanu, 1998;Drevin et al, 2001). According to the evolution of water from condensation and carbon dioxide from decarboxylation, the former precedes the latter, but they share a joint peak at 320°C.…”