Ethyl-Acetate Synthesis in Gas Phase by Immobilised Lipase

Gas-solid phase biocatalytic reactions offer economic and environmentally sound ways to produce ester compounds, which can be used as natural flavour components, and other types of value-added products. Therefore, the aim of this work was first to study the continuous gas-solid phase manufacture of ethyl-acetate (EtAc), which is an important fruit flavour compound, from ethanol (EtOH) and acetic acid (AcAc) applying immobilised Candida antarctica lipase B enzyme in a self-constructed bioreactor and then to determine the effects of initial substrate composition, applied temperature, and the amount of used enzyme on the yield. It can be concluded that there was a well-defined connection between the yield of the ethyl-acetate product, the temperature and the amount of used enzyme, while the correlation between the initial substrate composition and the product yield could not be described so easily. The activation energy of the esterification was found to be much lower in our system than that of the same enzymatic reaction carried out in other reaction media, such as organic solvent system, ionic liquid, etc.