Comparison of enzymatic hydrolysis in a centrifugal partition chromatograph and stirred tank reactor.

Recently the Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) device is investigated as a reactor for biocatalytic reactions, as it enables biocatalyst immobilization without solid support and continuous operation of biphasic reaction systems. However, a detailed determination of the enzymes behavior in the CPC reactor and comparison to a classical stirred tank reactor (STR) for biphasic enzyme catalysis is not shown yet. In this study, the performance of an enzymatic biphasic hydrolysis reaction using lipase from Candida rugosa is systematically evaluated using a STR. The results are compared to different experiments conducted in the CPC reactor and used to evaluate the reaction performance in each. The same characteristics and limitations were observed in STR and CPC. At all states the CPC provided a similar reaction performance. However, the reaction in the CPC runs faster into limitations and was not easily scalable due to complex effects of the flow pattern. Although the enzyme was immobilized successfully and the activity of the lipase was preserved during CPC operation optimizations are needed to make the CPC reactor more competitive. For instance, scaling up the chamber geometry seems to be mandatory to increase the reaction performance, which may promote this reactor concept as an alternative to common devices for continuous biphasic biocatalytic reactions.