Effect of Chain Length and Order of the Alcohol on Enzyme Activity During Enzymatic Esterification in Organic Media

Abstract

Esters of short chain acids and alcohols are found in nature as compounds of flavors. Lately the method for their manufacture has been the enzymatic esterification in non-conventional media. Although several reactions have been studied in various media (organic solvents, ionic liquids, supercritical fluids, solvent-free systems), there has been no systematic investigation to clarify the effects of chain length and order of alcohols on the activity of the enzyme. In this work acetic acid was used as an acyl donor and the roles of the linear and branched chains of C2-C8 primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols on the activity of Novozym 435, the widely used lipase preparation were studied. Both the length of the carbon chain and the order of the alcohol were found to strongly influence the activity of the enzyme using the same operational parameters for the reactions. As a result of this project general conclusions were made with regard to the characters of alcohols affecting the reaction rates, which can be applied to other similar reactions.