Enzymatically Production of Structured Lipids from Sunflower Oil in a Packed Bed Reactor

PALLA, CAMILA; CARRIN, M.E.

Phoenix, USA

Congreso; 101 th AOCS annual meeting; 2010

AOCS

The production of structured lipids by acidolysis with immobilized enzymes is generally performed in batch reactors. Using packed bed reactors (PBR) to confine the immobilized enzyme may be promising for further scale-up of the process. The aim of this work was to produce trans-free structured lipids in a PBR by acidolysis of sunflower oil and palmitic/stearic acids testing the catalytic activity of lipases from Rhizomucor miehei immobilized on modified chitosan microspheres. Different operational conditions in continuous mode (mass flow rate, temperature) were tested with hexane as the solvent. Saturated fatty acid incorporation was favored by a longer residence time, and a higher reaction temperature.