Enzymatic esterification of lauric acid to give monolaurin in a microreactor

Monolaurin is a naturally occurring compound widely utilized in food and cosmetics. In this paper, we present a new method for the synthesis of monolaurin by esterification between lauric acid and glycerol catalyzed by Novozym(R) 435 using a microreactor. The conversion of lauric acid is 87.04% in 20 min, compared with 70.54% via the batch approach in 5 h. Using an optimized solvent system consisting of t-BuOH/tert-amyl alcohol (1:1, v/v), the selectivity using the microreactor method is enhanced to 90.63% and the space-time yield of the process is 380.91 g/h/L. This newly devised method has the potential for application to other multiphase and enzymatic reactions.

Automated summary

This paper presents a new method for synthesizing monolaurin using a microreactor to catalyze the esterification between lauric acid and glycerol. The method shows higher conversion and selectivity compared to traditional batch methods, with potential applications to other multiphase and enzymatic reactions.