Development of an industrial sustainable process for wax esters production: enzyme immobilization, process optimization, and plant simulation
Abstract BACKGROUND As a result of the ban on whaling, there has been a shortage of spermaceti, a natural product with applications in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. A green and sustainable process for the biocatalytic synthesis of a wax ester mixture analogue to natural spermaceti is presented in t...
| Published in: | Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wiley
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jctb.7462 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jctb.7462 |
| Summary: | Abstract BACKGROUND As a result of the ban on whaling, there has been a shortage of spermaceti, a natural product with applications in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. A green and sustainable process for the biocatalytic synthesis of a wax ester mixture analogue to natural spermaceti is presented in this paper. RESULTS Immobilization of Candida antarctica lipase B by covalent binding to Purolite® Lifetech™ ECR8285 allowed for an immobilized derivative with 124.5 mg protein/g support (69.3% protein immobilization yield) that maintains 100% of its enzymatic activity after 12 months of cold storage and presents negligible loses of activity after 9 consecutive reaction cycles. The optimization of the synthesis process in a batch reactor resulted in conditions that, at 70 °C, 350 rpm, and 1.25% w/w of biocatalyst, achieved a conversion of 97% after 1 h of reaction. The simulation of a spermaceti production plant was carried out using the process simulation software aspenONE suite v10. The plant was designed for a continuous operation during 9 h per day, with a reactor of 20.25 L of working volume and a residence time of 1 h. The production of this plant would be 173.25 kg spermaceti/day, with a product purity of 99.55%. CONCLUSION The main novelty of this work is the design of a spermaceti production plant, using the most sustainable methodologies and resulting in a product with exceptional characteristics and minimal waste generation. Moreover, a new lipase immobilized derivative is also described. The good values of sustainability indicators point to the viability of its industrial implementation. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). |
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