Harnessing Acoustic Cavitation Energy for the Selective Degradation of Impurities in Glucose Syrup

Here, we open a path for cavitation bubbles to interact with a specific solute within a complex mixture. This tailored interaction enables the selective transfer of acoustic energy to a targeted chemical, allowing its degradation, primarily through localized cracking and oxidative mechanisms, without degrading the other components of the mixture. As a proof of concept, we investigated the purification of glucose syrup as an industrially relevant case. In brief, we have exploited the polarity differences between glucose and its impurities to locally confine cavitation bubbles at the proximity of these impurities, thereby promoting their specific decomposition without causing any degradation of glucose. Throughout this study, LogP proved to be a robust descriptor for interpreting and rationalizing our results.