Novel approaches to a sustainable industrial «white» biotechnology

Live Webinar "Conversion Prediction of an Enzymatic Esterification" on February 18, 2010
Guest Presenter is Prof. Dr. Andreas Liese from Hamburg University of Technology and BIOCATALYSIS2021

Nowadays, fatty acid esters are irreplaceable components in modern cosmetics and skin care products. The biocatalytic production of these esters gives broad advantages compared to the convenient chemically catalyzed processes in view of decreasing waste production and levels of undesired by products.

Recently, a new process of the fatty acid ester production using Novozym 435 as a catalyst in a highly viscous solvent free environment was developed and tested on pilot scale. Despite of good process characteristics there is still room for optimization of the operation parameters and process control analytics. One promising improvement is the implementation of FTIR based online analytics due to its robustness, cost efficiency and rapidity.

To confirm the applicability of FTIR technique to the chosen reaction system, the synthesis of myristyl myristate was monitored by ReactIR^TM 45m equipped with an external AgX fiber conduit diamond ATR probe in the range of 650 - 1950 cm-1.

A chemometric model was built with iC Quant^TM software by using the correlation between the conversion determined by titration and the spectra recorded at different time points. The obtained model was cross-validated and successfully applied for the prediction of the reaction courses for independent batches4.

This method can be applied for the stirred tank reactor as well as for the bubble column. The extension to other reaction systems is currently under investigation.

This work was funded in part by the BMBF in the Cluster "BIOCATALYSIS2021".

Source METTLER TOLEDO

Live Webinar on February 18, 2010 - Registration & all Information on the Webpage of METTLER TOLEDO.