Understanding Acidity of Molten Salt Hydrate Media for Cellulose systems, which indicate that the main effect of a salt on the rate stems from the effect on the Hydrolysis by Coupling Kinetic Studies, Electrolyte Solution Modeling, acidity rather than catalytic properties of the ions. Prior investigations suggest that in addition to 13 the nature of the salt, the mineral acid used to acidify the MSH plays a key role in cellulose and C-NMR Experiments dissolution and reactivity.[1,6] It has been proposed that a synergistic effect between LiBr and H2SO4 renders this system more reactive than HCl acidified MSH. Similar to the effect of the Natalia Rodriguez Quiroz, Dionisios G. Vlachos* salt, we found that the effect of different acids on the reactivity could be attributed to their effect Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, University of Delaware, on the overall acidity. However, as seen in Figure 2b, different acid-salt pairs will result in a 150 Academy St., Newark, DE 19716 (USA) different acidity based on (1) the strength of the acid that will contribute to the initial proton *
[email protected] concentration (2) the interactions between the salt and the acid that can affect the speciation of the acid in solution and therefore the proton concentration. Lastly, we assessed the calculated pH values in concentrated LiBr solutions experimentally by extending the 13C-NMR method Introduction developed by Farcasiu[7] for the calculation of Hammett acidity of super acids, to concentrated Homogeneous chemo-catalytic systems play an important role in biomass upgrading. inorganic salt solutions. Figure 2c shows good agreement between the OLI calculated pH and Recently, the depolymerization of lignocellulosic biomass in concentrated metal salts and more the experimentally measured pH in different salt solutions.