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BACKGROUND: The cost of using cellulase to effectively release fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic substrates is still a major impediment to development of the enzyme‐based ‘biorefinery’ industry. This study attempted to optimize a cellulase preparation from on‐site fermentation to efficiently hydrolyse atmospheric glycerol organosolv (AGO)‐pretreated wheat straw. RESULTS: Addition of Cu²⁺, PEG10000, L‐ascorbic acid and trehalose in the fermentation medium significantly improved the cellulase production. Use of all the additives enabled enhancement to 45.5% of filter paper cellulase (FPA), 14.7% of β‐glucosidase (BG) and 32.4% of carboxymethyl cellulase (CMCase). With the on‐site production of crude cellulase, accessory enzymes (β‐glucosidase (BG), xylanase and lysozyme) and additives (tea saponin (TS) and cationic polyacrylamide (c‐PAM)) were found to facilitate the hydrolysis of AGO‐pretreated substrates effectively. The optimized cellulase mixture allowed 96% of enzymatic hydrolysis at 5 FPU g‐¹ for 48 h on addition of 11.5 U g‐¹ BG, 180 U g‐¹ xylanase, 45 U g‐¹ lysozyme, 10 mg g‐¹ TS and 2 mg g‐¹ C‐PAM, which was twice that of the crude cellulase broth. CONCLUSION: Cellulase customization for specific substrate hydrolysis with on‐site produced broth produced an efficient pathway to lower the enzyme cost in the ongoing lignocellulosic biorefining industry. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry

Herein, a novel, facile, and versatile approach to fabricate highly flexible and conductive paper is proposed by electroless deposition (ELD) with the assistance of aminocellulose as the interface layer. The obtained Cu nanoparticles (NPs)-coated cellulose paper is highly conductive with a significant low resistance of 0.38 Ω sq-1 after only 10 min of ELD treatment. This conductive cellulose paper shows excellent stability when it suffers from bending, folding, and tape adhesion cycles. With the same method, the Cu NPs can also be successfully deposited on the polypropylene (PP)-filled hybrid paper. The conductive paper exhibits very smooth and hydrophobic surface with high reflection, which can be used for special electronic devices. In a word, the fabrication of aminocellulose interface permits a controlled ELD of metal nanoparticles on paper substrate, and this mild and low-cost method opens up new opportunities for large-scale production of flexible and wearable electronics.

The molecular and electronic structure of mononu- clear,dinuclear,polyuclear complexes and clusters of rare earths are discussed systematically,by an extended INDO me- thod made applicable to treat 4f-compounds,with respect to the nature of chemical bonding and factors influencing the coordination number and structural types of lanthanide com- plexes and organometallics.Some recent investigations in our laboratory on the synthesis,molecular and electronic struc- ture of some novel peroxy-bridging tetranuclear lanthanide complexes will also be discussed.