Efficient immobilisation of industrial biocatalysts: criteria and constraints for the selection of organic polymeric carriers and immobilisation methods

Immobilised enzymes are already used routinely in industry especially for synthesizing fine chemicals and pharmaceutics. Like in a classical chemical process, working with a heterogeneous catalyst enables its recovering and re-use but the need of immobilising enzymes arises from several different technical requirement. Firstly, the hydrophilic protein molecules of the free enzymes would aggregate when suspended in hydrophobic media that are used for many catalysed biotransformations. Secondly, applications of enzymes are often hampered by a lack of long-term operational stability, complex down-stream processing, low productivity and risk of contaminations. Ideally, optimal immobilisation technologies should provide solutions for all these problems.