ABSTRACT
One of the possibilities of limiting carbon dioxide emissions is to use pyrolysis oils from biomass. However, their very high oxygen content confers to these oils a chemical instability and a high viscosity. Among the oxygen-containing compounds present in bio-oils, furanic compounds derived from the decomposition of cellulosic and hemi-cellulosic biomass are the most refractory to deoxygenation. The major products of their hydrodeoxygenation are alkanes and secondly alkenes, but the intermediates are still subject to controversy. In this work, we performed a DFT simulation of the hydrodeoxygenation of furan (C4H4O) and 2-methylfuran in the presence of molybdenum and tungsten sulphide Mo(W)S2. The aim of this work is to elucidate the reaction intermediates and to compare the activities of the two catalytic sites used in our reaction conditions. Our calculations show that the partial hydrogenation of the two molecules occurs preferentially in position (2,5). The hydrogenolysis reactions of the C-O bonds occur in two steps. The molybdenum sulphide exhibits higher catalytic activity.
ABSTRACT
Two new xanthone glycosides, corymbiferin 3-O-beta-D-glucopyranoside (1) and swertiabisxanthone-I 8'-O-beta- d-glucopyranoside (2), were isolated from Gentianella amarella ssp. acuta, along with eight known xanthones: triptexanthoside C, veratriloside, corymbiferin 1-O-glucoside, swertianolin, norswertianolin, swertiabisxanthone-I, bellidin, and bellidifolin, four of them identified for the first time in G. amarella ssp. acuta. The isolation was conducted mainly by centrifugal partition chromatography, and the structures of the isolated compounds were established on the basis of spectrometric data including 2D NMR and mass spectrometry. Xanthones were weakly active against acetylcholinesterase (AChE), except triptexanthoside C, which inhibited AChE with an IC(50) of 13.8 +/- 1.6 microM. Some compounds were active against monoamine oxidases (MAO): bellidin and bellidifolin showed interesting inhibitory activity of MAO A, while swertianolin, the 8-O-glucopyranoside form of bellidifolin, gave 93.6% inhibition of MAO B activity at 10(-5) M.
