Customized Deep Eutectic Solvents for Biocatalysis

Chemical industries are currently facing the challenging transition from the classic manufacture of petroleum-based chemicals to the sustainable synthesis of bio-based products in the spirit of a circular bioeconomy. Enzymes are gaining importance in industry due to their outstanding efficiency, selectivity, and very mild reaction conditions. With these strengths, biocatalysis has found its place among the catalytic methods of today`s green chemistry. This project is part of a research unit in which eight researchers from Germany and Austria have joined forces to investigate the use of application-specific tailored solvents to boost the sustainability and efficiency of enzymatic processes. Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are a very potent class of solvent systems that offer advantages in (bio)chemical conversions due to their specific properties. DESs are mixtures of substances that, when combined, form a liquid with a much lower melting point than the individual components. This unique property makes DESs different from traditional solvents. They are particularly useful in biocatalysis because they can improve enzyme stability and activity. By carefully choosing the components and adjusting the water content, DESs can dissolve high concentrations of substrates and products, enhance enzyme performance, and simplify downstream processes. These properties make DESs crucial for advancing sustainable biocatalysis. The objective of this project is to prove the hypothesis that with the combination of tailor-made DES and continuous flow processes, biocatalytic transformations can be further improved to obtain higher throughput (due to higher substrate solubility) and enzyme productivity (due to enhanced mass transfer in continuous set-ups). Additionally, the goal is by smart solvent selection and downstream processes, the DESs-media can be recycled, thus minimizing environmental impacts. All decisions for using application-specific DESs in continuous biocatalysis must be included in an integrated process design, which comprises the theoretical, synthetic, and engineering research areas. This is made possible by a combination of investigation methods in the areas of computational fundamentals on the behavior of DESs and interactions with the protein, the study of enzymatic catalysis in tailor-made DESs, and the development of process control including downstream processing. As the chosen research approach requires close interdisciplinary cooperation between experts from modeling, catalysis, technical chemistry, and process engineering, the combined forces in a unique interdisciplinary way, will lead to a long-term establishment of rational, model-based decision processes for the use of DESs in biocatalytic flow processes.