Hydrothermal degradation of amino acids.

Abstract

Within the past years, hydrothermal processes have gathered much attention as promising conversion technologies for especially wet biomass. Amino acids are an integral component of biomass, zoo biomass in particular. However, what happens to them during hydrothermal treatment? Reviewing the available literature going back to the mid of the 20 th century reveals an astonishing, but still fragmentary view. In fact, two universal degradation reactions can be identified, i.\xa0e., deamination and decarboxylation, competing with each other. Thereby, small structural differences may obviously have huge impacts on the fate of individual amino acids. Although, the amount of available experimental data is relatively scarce in many cases. In this work, the available knowledge about the degradation of 20 proteinogenic amino acids under hydrothermal conditions is presented and discussed critically. The hydrothermal conversion of proteinaceus biomass as well as the Maillard reaction, both extensively reviewed elsewhere, are only touched on.