微生物によるアクリルアミド製造法の開発とその工業化

Abstract

Acrylamide is industrially produced by catalytic hydration of acrylonitrile with reduced copper salts. However, the preparation and regeneration of the catalyst are laborious and the process requires a high temperature. It has therefore been considered very desirable to establish a process for producing acrylamide under moderate conditions, because compounds containing double bonds in the molecule are readily polymerizable.There is a growing interest in the synthesis of useful organic compounds by biological process for its specificity and moderate reaction condition. Therefore, we attempted to produce acrylamide from acrylonitrile using microbial enzyme and we found a bacterium having a high acrylamide producing enzyme (nitrile hydratase).This paper describes the details and merits of the development of microbial production of acrylamide.