BOC – Bio Catalytical Oil Cleavage
Vegetable oils are a promising resource to produce fatty acids or their alkyl ester derivates having a vast market potential in the food industry and as biofuel. But their isolation is still challenging because existing processes result in product mixtures of several fatty acids depending on the respective oil source. The BOC case in MACBETH aims to establish a CMR-based system for the enzyme-catalysed selective hydrolysis of plant oil fatty acids in an aqueous-organic system followed by an integrated membrane separation to isolate selected fatty acids. With the knowledge and experiences of the other MACBETH cases, tailor-made building blocks will be developed for a time-efficient transfer of the entire system to an industrial pilot plant. For testing of process robustness and long term-stability of the process in field tests, two project partners (ENZY and SOLU) will test the pilot plant. For an easy transfer between both testing sites a containerized set up of the system is foreseen. Therefore, both the adaptability of the MACBETHs results to new areas of application and a local flexibility of the system will be demonstrated.
