Energy Conversion and Management: X (Jun 2021)
Novozym® 435 as bio-catalyst in the synthesis of methyl laurate
Abstract
Due to global temperature increase, the area of green chemistry is gaining more and more attention. The main goal is to replace petrochemicals with biobased chemicals from renewable feedstocks. In this work the reaction from vinyl laurate to methyl laurate and lauric acid has been investigated. The reaction took place in the presence of acetone working as solvent as well as reactant. Commercial immobilized enzyme of Candida antartica lipase B, Novozym® 435, was employed as catalyst. A design of experiments with two factors as well as a response surface methodology was performed. The two independent variables selected were reaction time and amount of catalyst while temperature and molar ratio were set to 50 °C and 1:1 respectively, with stirring constant at 400 RPM to avoid mass transfer limitations. Reaction time has shown to have the greatest effect on the conversion. The quadratic conversion model can be expressed C=53.168-4.548cat+32.283t+0.160cat2+0.043cat∙t-4.799t2 with R2=0.899. The optimum value for conversion based on this model was 88.47 % with t = 3.46 h and cat = 22.0711 wt.%. The experiments carried out at the optimal conditions shows the conversion to be as high as 94 % and 96 %, the values are higher than the model estimates, indicating that our mathematical model is underestimating the optimal operational conditions.
