OP-II-3

COMPARISON OF CHEMICAL AND ENZYMATIC CATALYSIS:KINETIC STUDIES IN BENCH-TOP PACKED BED REACTORPečar D., Goršek A.University of Maribor, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,Smetanova 17, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia,darja.pecar@uni-mb.si, andreja.gorsek@uni-mb.siOP-I-3Most traditional chemical catalysts can significantly improve economic potential ofan industrial fine chemicals production by increasing the reaction rates. However,their applicability in modern organic synthesis is limited due to low selectivity andenvironmental issues. In contrast, enzymes known as biocatalyst are usually highlyselective and therefore enable development of novel and chemically complexreaction pathways for efficient tailored product production. Nowadays, they arewidely used commercially, for example in the modern sustainable detergent, foodand brewing as well as pharmaceutical industries. However, preparative applicationof enzymes can cause some technical and especially economical annoyances. Theyare water soluble which makes them hard to recover and some products can inhibitthe enzyme activity. Therefore, enzymes are usually immobilized. Generally, thebiocatalysis is preferable to the chemical one, because of mild process conditions,non colored products, efficiency and environmental acceptability [1, 2].In the present study kinetic parameters of well known chemical and biologicalreaction, performed in bench-scale packed bed reactor, have been determined andcompared. The sucrose hydrolysis was chosen for investigation because it hasapplications in several industrial processes, it is safe and environmentally friendly.This organic synthesis produces an equimolar mixture of fructose and glucosedominated invert sugar [3]. The product can be produced by traditional chemicalconversion or by bioconversion using the enzyme invertase as biocatalyst. AmberliteIR 120 was used as a chemical catalyst and immobilized enzyme invertase as abiological one. The influence of reaction mixture temperature and volume flow rate onconversion was investigated in the case of chemical synthesis. The same processparameters were studied also for alternative enzymatic synthesis, except thatenzyme concentration was added as bioproces parameter.All experiments were performed in a laboratory bench-top packed bed reactorsystem. The reactor was equipped with the FTIR based ReactIR TM iC10 analysissystem (Mettler Toledo, model: 910–7002), which was used as PAT tool for the realtime monitoring of sucrose-glucose-fructose molar concentration profiles. As an41