Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.58, No.14, 5358-5378, 2019
Driving Immobilized Lipases as Biocatalysts: 10 Years State of the Art and Future Prospects
Immobilized lipase is a cost-effective biocatalyst for a wide variety of industrial applications, mainly in food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutics due to the huge number of so-called chemically catalyzed reactions of industrial interest that can be replaced by immobilized-enzyme catalysis. In this scenario, there is a growing demand to develop new products, supports, and immobilization protocols, as well as to elucidate the reaction mechanism aiming to cross the barrier imposed by the cost of immobilized lipases. As a large number of researchers have focused their efforts in order to find new applications taking into account new products emerging continuously, it is important to clarify the traditional and alternative process routes using immobilized lipases. In the past decade, almost 5000 research endeavors were reported, and this number continues to rise. This review reports the past 10 years of research work on the techniques used for lipase immobilization proposing a brief introduction about traditional immobilization techniques and an overview of the reactions catalyzed by immobilized lipases with a focus on applications and some products obtained by each pathway.