Immobilized biocatalytic process development and potential application in membrane separation: a review

Abstract

Biocatalytic membrane reactors have been widely used in different industries including food, fine chemicals, biological, biomedical, pharmaceuticals, environmental treatment and so on. This article gives an overview of the different immobilized enzymatic processes and their advantages over the conventional chemical catalysts. The application of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) reduces the energy consumption, and system size, in line with process intensification. The performances of MBR are considerably influenced by substrate concentration, immobilized matrix material, types of immobilization and the type of reactor. Advantages of a membrane associated bioreactor over a free-enzyme biochemical reaction, and a packed bed reactor are, large surface area of immobilization matrix, reuse of enzymes, better product recovery along with heterogeneous reactions, and continuous operation of the reactor. The present research work highlights immobilization techniques, reactor setup, enzyme stability under immobilized conditions, the hydrodynamics of MBR, and its application, particularly, in the field of sugar, starch, drinks, milk, pharmaceutical industries and energy generation.

• Application
• biocatalytic membrane reactor; enzyme immobilization
• enzyme stability
• hydrodynamic study

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledges UNICAL for the logistic support.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest. One of the authors Prof. Enrico Drioli gratefully acknowledges the WCU (World Class University Program) through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (R31-10092), for the partial support to this work.