Immobilized Biocatalysts, 3rd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is a continuation of the previous successful Special Issues “Immobilized Biocatalysts” and “Immobilized Biocatalysts II”.

Although enzymes as catalysts are environmentally beneficial, their applications require a certain degree of profitability to justify their cost competitiveness with conventional chemical catalysts. To make enzymatic biocatalysts increasingly economically viable, advances in modern biotechnology and protein engineering have contributed to improving various production processes. However, because the implementation of bioprocesses is a reality in industry, some critical obstacles still need to be overcome. For example, the efficiency of enzymatic processes can be increased by using immobilized catalysts (heterogeneous biocatalysts). In this way, it is possible to protect enzymes from various interactions with a reaction medium, increase their stability, allow reuse, or prolong a bioreactor’s operation time. Immobilization also increases the shelf life of an enzyme, thus facilitating its large-scale use and the economic formulation of biotechnological industries. There are several ways to immobilize enzymes, and three of the most common methods are physical adsorption, cross-linking or covalent bonding, and encapsulation. However, despite the great diversity of methods developed to date, no general approach applies to all enzymes. Therefore, for each case (process) it is necessary to choose the most straightforward and cheapest protocol that will result in a biocatalyst with high operational activity as well as stability. In this context, this Special Issue aims to bring together contributions for improving immobilized enzyme performance. The idea is not limited to biocatalyst preparation; the study of kinetics and reactor design is also welcome, including mass transfer limitations and scale-up.

Prof. Dr. Luciana R. B. Gonçalves
Prof. Dr. Nathália Saraiva Rios
Guest Editors

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• enzyme immobilization
• heterogeneous biocatalysts
• enzyme stabilization
• novel immobilization platforms
• bioreactor design

• Immobilized Biocatalysts in Catalysts (30 articles)
• Immobilized Biocatalysts II in Catalysts (9 articles)