The most recent issue of Green Chemistry has a 41 page review (DOI: 10.1039/C1GC15579B) by Udo Kragl and his co-workers Stefanie Wenda, Sabine Illner and Annett Mell, entitled "Industrial Biotechnology- the future for green chemistry" which is a useful overview of where biocatalysis is now. A nice feature it has that I havent seen before is the use of little boxes which are labelled "critical remarks" to discuss highlight problems sometimes in the perception and sometimes in the reality of using biocatalytic process industrially.
As is necessary in this sort of review, there is a discussion (p. 3011) on how good nitrile hydratase is for bulk synthesis of acrylamide though it is interesting to see the scale of the use is "more than 50,000 tons per year" referring back to a viewpoint paper in ChemCatChem authored by Yuryev and Liese which actually says the Mitsubishi Rayon process "runs on scales up to 50,000 tons per year"- whatever that actually means! So it would appear that my suspicion that no one actually knows how successful (in terms of level of adoption) one of the most successfully implemented biocatalytic processes is, has not been contradicted!
Directly following the discussion of acrylamide manufacture is a discussion comparing the chemical and the Lonza chemoenzymatic routes to nicotinamide, with some excellent leading references.
Showing posts with label Lonza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lonza. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Industrial Exploitation of Nitrile Hydratases
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!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
