Covalent immobilization of an engineered omega-transaminase mutant Trp60Cys from Chromobacterium violaceum (CvTAW60C) was performed on bisepoxide-activated aminoalkyl resins. Activity of the various CvTAW60C preparations was evaluated in kinetic resolution of four racemic amines (rac-1a–d). The most active EA-G-CvTAW60C preparation (CvTAW60C attached to polymeric resin with ethylamine function activated with glycerol diglycidyl ether—EA-G) could perform the kinetic resolution of racemic 4-phenylbutan-2-amine (rac-1a) over 49% conversion up to 19 consecutive reaction cycles or in media containing up to 50% v/v DMSO as cosolvent in batch mode reactions. The immobilization process of CvTAW60C onto the EA-G resin filled in stainless steel bioreactors was also tested in flow-through mode. Kinetic resolution of three racemic amines containing aromatic moieties (rac-1a-c) was performed in continuous-flow mode resulting in easy-to-separate mixture of the corresponding ketone (2a–c) and the non-converted (R)-amine in high enantiopurity (ee(R)-1a-c ≥ 96%).

Two strategies to increase the productivity of secreted Thai Rosewood beta-glucosidase in Pichia pastoris processes were evaluated. Both methods were based on increasing the oxygen transfer rate (OTR) in the process by simple means. Increasing the driving force for the diffusion from the air bubbles to the medium by elevating the air pressure, from 1.2 to 1.9 bar increased the oxygen uptake rate (OUR) by 59% while increasing the driving force by accepting oxygen limitation increased the OUR by 35%. The OTR increased less than in proportion to the increased solubility in the high-pressure process, which indicates that air bubble compression reduces the volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient (K(L)a). Even though the methanol consumption increased almost in proportion to the OTR in both processes the biomass production did not increase as much. This is explained as a higher maintenance demand for methanol in the oxygen limited (0.027 g g(-1) g(-1)) and high-pressure processes (0.035 g g(-1) g(-1)), compared to 0.022 g g(-1) g(-1) in the methanol limited reference process. However, in spite of the low effect of increasing OTR on the biomass production the total beta-glucosidase yield increased almost in proportion to the increased methanol consumption and reached highest value in the high-pressure process, while the beta-glucosidase purity was highest in the oxygen-limited process due to release of less contaminating proteins.

This study investigated the possibility of using a model based on the anaerobic digestion model no. 1 (ADM1) on a full-scale 4000 m3 digester in order to understand how such theoretical models can be applied to a real industrial process. The industrial scale digester co-digests the organic fraction of municipal solid waste, grease trap sludge, and ley crop silage with varying feed rates and amounts of volatile solids. A year of process data was collected. Biogas flow, methane content/flow, and ammonia nitrogen were the variables that the model was best at predicting (index of agreement at 0.78, 0.61/0.77, and 0.68, respectively). The model was also used to investigate the effect of increasing the volatile solids (VS) concentration entering the digester. According to simulation results, increasing the influent VS concentration will increase biogas and methane outflow (from 1.5 million Nm3 methane to more than 2 million Nm3 methane), but decrease the amounts of biogas/methane per unit of volatile solids (from about 264 Nm3 methane per tonne VS to below 215 Nm3 methane per tonne VS).