Enzymes dual reactor system

If the indicator reaction is also enzyme catalyzed, then two methods may be used for the conversion of primary reaction product into the detected species. The first involves the use of a second reactor column containing immobilized indicator enzyme between the primary column and the detector, in a dual-reactor system. The second, and more common approach, employs a single reactor containing coimmobilized primary and indicator enzymes. For linear conversion of primary product, it must be remembered that the quantity of indicator enzyme present must be sufficient to for the complete conversion of all primary product, so that an excess of immobilized indicator enzyme must be present. 

The continuous production of COS was found to be feasible with combination of a column reactor packed with immobilized chitosanase and UF membrane system, and this system was developed by Jeon and Kim (2000b), named as dual reactor system (Figure 5.2). In this system, production of COSs may be performed in two steps. In the first step, chitosan is partially hydrolyzed by the immobilized chitosanase prepacked in the column reactor and the product is supplied to the UF membrane system for the production of COS. As expected, the viscosity of partially hydrolyzed chitosan was low thereby it does not create fouling problems under controlled conditions, and continuous production of COSs was achieved. This method ensures a greater productivity per unit enzyme, ability to control molecular weight distribution and more efficient continuous production process compared to those of conventional methods. Therefore, this method is commonly used to produce different molecular size COSs to study their bioactivities. 

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