Nitto biocatalytic acrylamide process

The biocatalytic acrylamide process is run by the Nitto Chemical Corp., now part of the Mitsubishi Rayon Corp., in Tokyo Bay on a scale of 30 000 tpy, in fed-batch mode up to 25-40% acrylamide at 0-10°C to complete conversion and with product yields > 99.9%, conditions under which a significant cost differential can be assumed with respect to the conventional chemical process. 

This has been impressively demonstrated by Nitto Chemical Industries with the biocatalytic manufacture of acrylamide, an important building block for polymers and copolymers, produced in quantities of over 200000 t/y [80]. The chemocata-lytic route to acrylamide (32) uses a reduced Raney copper catalyst for hydration. This metal-catalyzed process has been shown to be superior to the acid-catalyzed hydration, but catalyst poisoning and waste-water problems due to heavy-metal content cause some problems (eq. (10)) [81, 82]. 

A remarkable example of a lyase-catalyzed commercial process, developed by the Japanese company Nitto and operative since 1985, is the biocatalytic production of acrylamide using immobilized whole cells of Rhodococcus rhodochrous [17]. The enzyme responsible for water addition to the double bond of acrylonitrile is nitrile hydratase ... 

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