Abstract:
With the growth of the chemical industry over the last decade, the need for cheaper (and more environmentally
friendly) alternatives to petrochemicals of ever-increasing cost has grown steadily. Oleochemicals and biodiesel
(OC/BD) are considered as green alternatives to petroleum derivatives, because they come from renewable oils
and fats. OC/BD are currently produced by the traditional energy intensive chemical catalyzed methods, which
have several economic and environmental drawbacks. For these reasons, the enzymatic production of OC/BD has
attracted a growing attention for their greener pathway with respect to the chemically catalyzed processes.
Lipase-catalyzed processes have a low energy requirement, since reactions are performed under atmospheric
pressure and mild temperature and without the creation of side reactions. Furthermore, utilization of enzyme
catalysts offers many advantages such as reducing the initial capital investment due to simplified downstream
processing steps. Despite all the previous advantages, however, the high cost of lipases restricted their large-scale
utilization. In the past decade, efforts have been made to reduce the cost of the enzymatic-catalyzed synthesis of
OC/BD. However, most previous studies have studied only the technical feasibility of the lipase-catalyzed re-
actions and overlocked the economic viability. This review critically discusses the factors affecting the promotion
of the economic feasibility of the enzymatic processes from the lab to large scale. These include reactor
configuration, type of feedstock, conditions optimization, immobilization, lipase-producing microorganisms
