Polymer-Coated Mesoporous Carbon as Enzyme Platform for Oxidation of Bisphenol A in Organic Solvents

Lidong Wu; Xiang Ji; Jing Kong

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b01945

Polymer-Coated Mesoporous Carbon as Enzyme Platform for Oxidation of Bisphenol A in Organic Solvents

ACS Omega. 2019 Sep 27;4(15):16409-16417. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b01945. eCollection 2019 Oct 8.

Authors

Lidong Wu^{1

2}, Xiang Ji², Jing Kong²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Control of Quality and Safety for Aquatic Products, Ministry of Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Beijing 100141, China.
² Department of Chemistry and Department of Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States.

Abstract

Bisphenol A (BPA) is not only a widely used chemical but also a toxic pollutant, and its biodegradation in an aqueous environment is hard due to its near insolubility in water. While the enzyme tyrosinase can oxidize BPA in organic solvents, it does so only very slowly. In the present study, we have found that in toluene the catalytic activity of tyrosinase deposited onto coated mesoporous carbon is significantly enhanced when the support is precoated with polyethylenimine. The resultant enzymatically formed o-quinone is both easily recoverable and potentially useful monomer. As a particular example, the o-quinone readily reacts with diamine in toluene to form poly(amino-quinone) polymers, which are suitable for anticorrosion, energy storage, or biosensor applications.