Process Intensification of Immobilized Enzyme Reactors

Abstract

The advantages of enzyme catalysis are high specificity and (enantio)selectivity, resulting in reactions with little or no by-products. The applications of enzymes in aqueous medium are well established and have been extended to organic synthesis more recently. The two limiting factors for large scale application of enzymes are continuous processing and process scale-up. Process intensification has the potential to overcome these challenges posed by conventional processing methods by incorporating a novel reactor design or by using alternate processing methods. Process intensified reactors like membrane reactors, microreactors, monolithic reactors and rotating disc reactors for enzyme catalyzed reactions will be discussed in this chapter. These reactors have shown an improved performance compared to the enzymatic reactors currently in use, and future opportunities include application for enzymatic catalysis on an industrial scale and advances in reactor design and process control.