Decomposition of Amino Acids Under Hydrothermal conditions

摘要

The reactions of amino acids under sub-critical water conditions were investigated. All reactions were carried out under a pressure value corresponds to the saturated vapor pressure of water at the employed reaction temperature (hereafter called saturated sub-critical water condition). The reaction temperatures were in the range of 503-563 K. As reactants, solutions containing a single amino acid or mixture of seventeen different amino acids were used and the obtained results in both cases were compared. Generally, the results showed that the existence of amino acids together in a mixture decreased the overall stability since the activation energy values of decomposition of individual amino acids reduced significantly due to their presence in a mixture of amino acids. Most of the amino acids were found to be labile at acidic and near natural pH values and more stable in a highly basic pH value.