Chapter 17: Biocatalytic Process Engineering

Biocatalytic reactions, using one or more enzymes in a variety of formats, are of great value as synthetic tools for organic chemists wishing to carry out reactions which are otherwise very difficult with conventional approaches. In the last decade, enormous progress has been made in developing molecular biology methods to access a huge range of new enzyme activities. All these reactions, many of which have immediate commercial potential, require development into processes suitable for scale-up and operation against specific economic, environmental and regulatory constraints. As a complement to the other chapters in this book, in this chapter some of the key features of the necessary biocatalytic process engineering to enable such scale-up will be presented.