Publication – Towards a continuous flow environment for lipase-catalyzed reactions

Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic Volumes 85–86, January 2013, Pages 1–9

• Ivaldo Itabaiana Jr., Leandro Soter de Mariz e Miranda, Rodrigo Octavio Mendonça Alves de Souza
• Biocatalysis and Organic Synthesis Group, Chemistry Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, CEP 22941-909, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

An Asia system is used to enable 60x higher throughput per gram of catalyst than the batch process. The Asia Heater is used to carefully control the temperature of solid supported lipases to, for example, esterify a chiral alcohol in the field of sugar based surfactants.

Abstract: Despite the technological knowledge available for thousands of years about fermentation processes, interestingly only in the last two hundred years scientists have developed tools that allow chemists to use the natural power of biocatalysts in the laboratory. The present review has covered the literature from 1991 to 2012 with the most exciting examples of lipase-catalyzed reactions under continuous flow regime. Different types of reactors can be found and in most cases a greater improvement can be observed when working under such conditions compared to the traditional batch reactors.

This paper uses an Asia flow chemistry system and Asia solid phase reactors.