Kinetics of continuous starch hydrolysis in a membrane reactor.

Following a previous study on kinetics of enzymatic starch hydrolysis with Termamyl 120l (Novo Nordisk) in batch reactor, this paper deals with kinetics in a continuous recycled membrane reactor (CRMR). Starting from results obtained in various working conditions, an equation relating the production rates of small oligosaccharides (DP ranging from 1 to 5) to the sum of concentrations of oligosaccharides with a higher degree of polymerisation is proposed. This equation looks like the one already reported for a batch system, with the exception that in the CRMR the enzyme activity varies: an exponential decay of activity as a function of time must be introduced to smooth carefully data points.