Immobilized Enzyme

The book is a comprehensive review of immobilized enzyme which is to guide the engineer and scientist along the path toward their industrial applications. The first section of this book aims to clarify the principle of immobilized enzymes. Several contributing factor in an immobilized enzyme system will be analyzed in an effort to accomplish this objective. Those factors that contribute to the performance of an immobilized enzyme system include the carrier, the immobilization technique, cofactor requirements, the reactor, and carrier regeneration. In earlier days, immobilized enzymes were carried out using the biotechnology methods, which were classified as Reverse enzyme immobilization and irreverse enzyme immobilization methods. Reverse enzyme immobilization includes absorption, ionic binding, affinity binding and metal binding. Irreverse enzyme immobilizations includes covalent binding and entrapment such as encapsulation, entrapping. The technique and ideal materials selected depend on enzyme process. Several studies compared the biochemical characterizations of soluble enzyme and immobilized enyzme. Because of rapid growth of nanotechnology, the synergistic interaction of biotechnology methods and nanotechnology methods, various enzymes are immobilized using conventional methods and variety nanomaterial such as carbon nanotubes, chitosan nanoparticles and polyaniline–carbon nanotubes. This book also reports that the development of techniques and support material/matrix improve significant enzyme activity and increasing their self life.

The remaining content of this book focuses on the variety applications of enzyme immobilization in industrial processing such as wood processing, paper manufacturing, sucrose hydrolysis, lactose hydrolysis and production of glucose syrup which is further fermented to bioethanol production and fermentation of food processing. The immobilized enzymes are always more stable than soluble enzymes, thereby allowing their applications even under harsh conditions such as pH, high temperature, non-aqueous solvents and organic solvents, then enable following their application in extra temperature and humidity biosensor for detecting pesticide level in food, water and formaldehyde in pollutant as well as biofuel cell. Beside that, their applications in biodiesel is also discussed.