The effect of enzyme concentration and space time on the performance of a continuous recycle membrane reactor for one-step starch hydrolysis

In spite of minor limitations due to membrane fouling and catalyst inactiva tion, one-step hydrolysis of starch with termamyl enzyme in a continuous re cycle membrane reactor appears to be a promising way to produce high DE sug ar syrups. In addition to the main advantage over batch process to correctl y integrating reaction and separation, this type of system opens up to proc ess engineer tunable performance in terms of conversion, capacity and produ ctivity. In this paper the effects of enzyme concentration and space time h ave been examined. As a whole it appears that by increasing these two param eters the conversion is improved; but the capacity and productivity are red uced leading to higher processing costs. Optimisation of enzyme concentrati on and space time needs that economic criteria are very carefully taken int o account. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.