Retardation Phenomena of Levoglucosan on the Hardening of "Shiratama-ko" Gels

Abstract

The high hydrophobicity of Levoglucosan was verified by a newly developed assessment method for monosaccharide hydrophobicity. This method is a simple one, in which the hydrophobicity of a monosaccharide is estimated by the retention time of HPLC (partition chromatography) concerning monosaccharides. By this method, the hydrophobicity of Levoglucosan was estimated to be 1.36 times as large as that of D-Deoxyribose: this sugar was known as the monosaccharide with the highest hydrophobicity. We also assumed the hydrophobicities of L-Arabinose and L-Rhamnose. Based on these estimated hydrophobicities, we analyzed the data on the hardening phenomena of "Shiratama-ko" gels which were supplemented with monosaccharides. We came to the conclusionthat hardnesses of the gels has an obvious tendency to be decreased with increasing hydrophobicity.