Reusable macroporous HDPE for bacteria immobilization

CLAUDIA BRITOS; ELIANA C DE BENEDETTI; FLAVIA QUIROGA; JORGE A. TRELLES; MARIANO GRASSELLI

los cocos

Simposio; V Argentine-Chilean Polymer Symposium. VIII Argentine Polymer Symposium. IX Chilean Symposium of Polymer Chemistry and Physical-Chemistry; 2009

Archipol

Biotransformations are a promising synthetic alternative to organic chemistry because reactions can take place by means of a one-pot reaction under very mild conditions (Utagawa 1999) and offer environmentally clean chemical technologies (Liese et al 2001). Microbial whole cells can be directly used as biocatalysts, which provide a simpler and cheaper methodology. Cell immobilization can improve the process economy increasing reusability and feasibility (Trelles et al 2004). Due to the fact that microbial cells have predominantly negative charges on their external surface, they can be efficiently adsorbed on materials, such us polymers, carrying cationic groups. These types of polymers could be obtained by crosslinking, as in a styrene-divinylbenzene copolymer crosslinked with poly(ethyleneimine) (Tashiro et al 1991) or by graft polymerization of inert polymers (Lee et al 1996). In this last case, amino groups are attached on the grafted polymer branches in a flexible brushtype structure that interacts with microbial cells. This technique allows the preparation of polymeric material on a variety of shapes such as films, fibers, hollow fibers or non-woven fabric (Sugiyama et al 1993).