Enzyme hydrolysis of soybean oil in a slug flow microsystem

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the development of a continuous microfluidic reaction system for hydrolysis of soybean oil catalyzed with Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase (Lipolase 100L). The microfluidic reaction system generates water–oil emulsions in the form of a hydrodynamically well controlled slug flow and automatically separates the oil phase after the hydrolysis by employing two microfluidic separators. All elements of this reaction system were tested at different hydrodynamic conditions and showed the ability to operate in a wide range of reactant flow rates. 25–30% conversion of triglyceride was reached in setting the residence time of the emulsion mixture to 10min. This conversion increased to almost 50% for the residence time of 1h. These results are comparable with those published for the same enzyme reaction system. This feature along with the benefits stemming from the use of microfluidics make our developed system a useful, easy to control and easy to scale-up technology for fast production of fine chemicals. Moreover, our calculations indicate that our slug flow system allows for significant savings of the mechanical energy.