23 Sept 2016

Dual reactor for production of chitosan oligosaccharides


Chitooligosaccharides (COS), obtained by chemical or enzymatic hydrolysis of chitosan, are more soluble and exhibit enhanced biological activities compared with the polysaccharide. COS show antimicrobial, antioxidant, antiangiogenic, antitumoral, anti-inflammatory and prebiotic properties, among others. In this work, a chitosanolytic enzyme was covalently immobilized onto glyoxal agarose beads  and assessed for the continuous production of COS. A two-step process was proposed, in which chitosan was first hydrolyzed in a batch reactor to a viscosity that could flow through a packed-bead reactor (PBR), thus avoiding clogging of the column. This work was performed in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark

Reference: “Continuous production of chitooligosaccharides by an immobilized enzyme in a dual-reactor system”. P. Santos-Moriano, J.M. Woodley, F.J. Plou. Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic 133, 211-217 (2016), doi:10.1016/j.molcatb.2016.09.001