Immobilised enzyme reactors

Here we will focus on the biochemical aspects. The techniques of isolating enzymes, the process of enzyme immobilisation and the behaviour of immobilised enzyme reactors are discussed in detail in the BIOTOL text Technological Applications of Biocatalysts", so will not deal with these aspects in detail here. In outline, however, once the desired enzyme is isolated, it is attached to a carrier material. In order to ascertain sufficient accessibility of the enzyme, a bifunctional spacer molecule is attached to the carrier ... 

L. Gorton, G. Marko-Varga, E. Dominguez and J. Emneus, In S. Lam and G. Malikin (Eds.), Analytical Applications of Immobilised Enzyme Reactors. Blackie Academic Professional, London, 1994, pp. 1-21. 

High-Pressine liquid Chromatography.- Reviews on the biomedical applications of h.p.l.c.-m.s., and immobilised enzyme reactors in h.p.l.c. detector systems, have included carbohydrate applications. 

Bartolini, M., Cavrini, V., and Andrisano, V. (2004) Monolithic micro-immobilised-enzyme reactor with human recombinant acetylcholinesterase for online inhibition studies./. Chromatogr. A, 1031,27-34. 

As well as being active, the immobilised enzyme also needs to be stable (active for a long period) and the support must promote this. The support must also have appropriate mechanical characteristics it should not disintegrate if used in a stirred tank reactor it should produce even flow (without channelling) in a packed bed reactor. Hie cost of the support is also important. 

In this case study, an enzymatic hydrolysis reaction, the racemic ibuprofen ester, i.e. (R)-and (S)-ibuprofen esters in equimolar mixture, undergoes a kinetic resolution in a biphasic enzymatic membrane reactor (EMR). In kinetic resolution, the two enantiomers react at different rates lipase originated from Candida rugosa shows a greater stereopreference towards the (S)-enantiomer. The membrane module consisted of multiple bundles of polymeric hydrophilic hollow fibre. The membrane separated the two immiscible phases, i.e. organic in the shell side and aqueous in the lumen. Racemic substrate in the organic phase reacted with immobilised enzyme on the membrane where the hydrolysis reaction took place, and the product (S)-ibuprofen acid was extracted into the aqueous phase. 

However, there are disadvantages to using immobilised cells. The cell may contain numerous catalytically active enzymes, which may catalyse unwanted side reactions. Also, the cell membrane itself may serve as a diffusion barrier, and may reduce productivity. The matrix may sharply reduce productivity if the microorganism is sensitive to product inhibition. One of the disadvantages of immobilised cell reactors is that the physiological state of the microorganism cannot be controlled. 

Special reactors are required to conduct biochemical reactions for the transformation and production of chemical and biological substances involving the use of biocatalysts (enzymes, immobilised enzymes, microorganisms, plant and animal cells). These bioreactors have to be designed so that the enzymes or living organisms can be used under defined, optimal conditions. The bioreactors which are mainly used on laboratory scale and industrially are roller bottles, shake flasks, stirred tanks and bubble columns (see Table 1). 

The equilibrium particle diameter in the case of non agglomerate particle systems or the enzyme activity of immobilised enzymes after a certain exposure of time is entirely due to the reactor-specific comminution process, and conclusions can therefore be drawn regarding the maximum intensity of hydrodynamic stress. 

For bio-transformation processes, immobilised enzymes are often used because their activity persists over a longer period of time than that of free enzymes. The reduction of enzyme activity in enzymatic reactors is a consequence of energy dissipation by sparging and stirring, which is required for instance for oxygen transport or realisation of constant reaction conditions as regards temperature and pH. In the other hand low and high pH-values leads also to a decrease of enzyme activity and increase the stress sensitivity. 

The reaction in a homogeneous solution with a polar organic solvent in which the enzymes and substrates are both soluble, occurs often at the expense of the enzyme stability [4, 5]. Besides immobilised enzymes in organic solvents [6], emulsion reactors, especially enzyme-membrane-reactors coupled with a product separation by membrane based extractive processes [7-9] and two-phase membrane reactors [10-12], are already established on a production scale. 

In multiphase systems, biological reactions are always carried out in the presence of water. This is true even if the presence of water is almost negligible. The biocatalyst maybe present as a solid phase, for example as immobilised enzymes or cells, or as an individual cell the substrate may also constitute a solid phase. When necessary, gas is sparged into reactors to supply oxygen or a gaseous substrate and to remove carbon dioxide. Thus, heterogeneous systems with four phases involved are very typical cases. 

M. Varadi, N. Adanyi, E.E. Szabo and N. Trummer, Determination of the ratio of d- and L-amino acids in brewing by an immobilised amino acid oxidase enzyme reactor coupled to amperometric detection, Biosens. Bioelectron., 14(3) (1999) 15335-15340. 

Enzyme immobilisation allows the construction of enzyme reactors in which the enzyme can be reused. Furthermore, the process operate continuously and can be readily controlled. Enzyme reactors currently in use include those illustrated in Figure 2.1. 

The type of tubing used for constructing the manifold should always be specified but less emphasis should be given to manifold components outside of the analytical path. There are different types of reactor (see 6.2.3) and they should be specified. The coiled reactor is by far the most common, and no further information means that this kind of reactor is used. Length and inner diameter of the tubing, winding diameter of the coiled reactor and the presence of different accessories (mixing chambers, solid-phase mini-columns, immobilised enzymes and connectors) in the analytical path should be reported. 

The work-up of batch processes, run in stirred vessels, had often faced the challenge to efficiently separate and recover the enzyme used. Meanwhile, there is abundant know-how available to immobilise enzymes on different carriers, though some issues need always to be considered maintained activity of the enzyme, its stability towards solvents and the operating temperature used in a reaction. Enzyme immobilisation allows for continuous reactions carried out in columns or in a sequence of continuous stirred-tank reactors. Certain advantages are offered by Degussa s enzyme-membrane-reactor (EMR), where the enzyme is surrounded by a hoUow-fibre membrane, that is permeable to substrate and product. 

Messing R A (1975), Immobilised enzymes for industrial reactors. New York, USA, Academic Press Inc. 

The alternative to batch mode operation is continuous operation. In the continuous mode there is a continuous flow of medium into the fermentor and of product stream out of the fermentor. Continuous bioprocesses often use homogenously mixed whole cell suspensions. However, immobilised cell or enzyme processes generally operate in continuous plug flow reactors, without mixing (see Figure 2.1, packed-bed reactors). 

Several L-amino acids are produced on a large scale by enzymatic resolution of N-acetyl-D,L-amino adds (Figure A8.4). Acylase immobilised on DEAE-Sephadex is for example employed in a continuous process while Degussa uses the free acylase retained in a membrane reactor. In the latter process the advantage of reuse of the enzyme and homogeneous catalysis are combined. 

Degussa AG uses immobilised acylase to produce a variety of L-amino adds, for example L-methionine (80,000 tonnes per annum). The prindples of the process are the same as those of the Tanabe-process, described above. Degussa uses a new type of reactor, an enzyme membrane reactor, on a pilot plant scale to produce L-methionine, L-phenylalanine and L-valine in an amount of 200 tonnes per annum. 

The values of the Michaelis-Menten kinetic parameters, Vj3 and C,PP characterise the kinetic expression for the micro-environment within the porous structure. Kinetic analyses of the immobilised lipase in the membrane reactor were performed because the kinetic parameters cannot be assumed to be the same values as for die native enzymes. 

The inhibition analyses were examined differently for free lipase in a batch and immobilised lipase in membrane reactor system. Figure 5.14 shows the kinetics plot for substrate inhibition of the free lipase in the batch system, where [5] is the concentration of (S)-ibuprofen ester in isooctane, and v0 is the initial reaction rate for (S)-ester conversion. The data for immobilised lipase are shown in Figure 5.15 that is, the kinetics plot for substrate inhibition for immobilised lipase in the EMR system. The Hanes-Woolf plots in both systems show similar trends for substrate inhibition. The graphical presentation of rate curves for immobilised lipase shows higher values compared with free enzymes. The value for the... 

A commercial pectinase, immobilised on appropriately functionalised y-alumina spheres, was loaded in a packed bed reactor and employed to depolymerise the pectin contained in a model solution and in the apple juice. The activity of the immobilized enzyme was tested in several batch reactions and compared with the one of the free enzyme. A successful apple juice depectinisation was obtained using the pectinase immobilised system. In addition, an endopolygalacturonase from Kluyveromyces marxianus, previously purified in a single-step process with coreshell microspheres specifically prepared, was immobilised on the same active support and the efficiency of the resulting catalyst was tested. 

Several scouting experiments were performed to find the best pH conditions. Figure 3 reports the ratio between the PG specific activity measured after the purification procedure (ASf) and the initial PG specific activity (ASi). At pH 3.5, the microspheres are able to remove from the broth the major part of the protein without PG activity, thus providing a four time increase of the enzyme specific activity. The purified PG from Kluyveromyces marxianus was immobilised following the above procedure. Batch reactions in the packed bed reactor were done to evaluate the biocatalyst stability. After an initial loss, due to enzyme release, the residual PG activity reaches a plateau value corresponding to about 40% of the initial activity. Probably, some broth component interfered during the immobilisation reaction weakening the protein-carrier interactions. 

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