Environmental assessment of enzyme production and purification

Abstract

The importance of bioprocesses has increased in recent decades, as they are considered to be more sustainable than chemical processes in many cases. E factors can be used to assess the sustainability of processes. However, it is noticeable that the contribution of enzyme synthesis and purification is mostly neglected. We, therefore, determined the E factors for the production and purification of 10 g enzymes. The calculated complete E factor including required waste and water is 37,835 gwaste·genzyme-1. This result demonstrates that the contribution of enzyme production and purification should not be neglected for sustainability assessment of bioprocesses.