Cycle time and carrier life in immobilized-glucoamylase reactors

The activity of immobilized enzymes decays with time, and the capacity of a carrier will decrease with repeated regeneration. Relations between production cost and these factors are shown, and demonstrated with data on glucoamylase immobilized on porous glass. Optimum design calls for very low temperature and for cycle times several years long. A practical design may be made by limiting cycle time to an upper limit and calculating the temperature for which this time is optimum. In this case, reagents and carrier are the most important costs, even with an expensive enzyme.