Nitrile hydratases are one of the big successes of industrial biocatalysis. An enzymatic way to convert a nitrile to an amide is obviously attractive for its controlability and selective hydration.
There are several companies which use NHase-based nitrile hydration. The original company I think was Nitto Chemical Industries (now Mitsubishi Rayon) who use have used Rhodococcus and Pseudomonas to convert acrylonitrile to acrylamide. Wolfgang Aehle in his 2007 book "Enzymes in Industry: Production and Applications" indicates that this process runs (p281/2 available via a Google Books search) at 30,000 t/a. There are indications behind a paywall that this business may no longer be owned by Mitsubishi but by SNF Floerger Group of France but I don't want to know enough to pay up.
Lonza are another company often quoted as industrial users of NHases but in the conversion of 3-cyanopyridine to nicotinamide. They have a 3000 t/a plant in Guangzhou and it has been reported that they use the Nitto technology for this conversion.
A more recent entrant (2008) into the acrylonitrile to acrylamide bioconversion is Senmin in South Africa who have used Ciba-BASF technology to do the hydration. I dont know the scale of the operation but apparently (slides 37 onwards) they could make 20,000 tons of polyacrylamide polymer from its output.
It is not easy finding verifiable information on industrial usage of biocatalysis- I am going back to reading the academic literature!
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please can you send this paper to me
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