The effect of enzyme loading, alcohol/acid ratio and temperature on the enzymatic esterification of levulinic acid with methanol for methyl levulinate production: a kinetic study

As an important bio-based chemical, methyl levulinate (ML) can be produced via enzymatic esterification of levulinic acid with methanol. A kinetic model is developed in this work based on the law of mass action and reaction reversibility, to investigate the effect of enzyme loading, alcohol/acid ratio and temperature on ML yield. Data analysis shows that newly developed binary regression is apparently more persuasive than the commonly used unitary regression. Kinetic study reveals: (1) rate constants of esterification/hydrolysis increase with increasing enzyme loading, while their ratio (equilibrium constant) remains invariant. (2) Methanol has no toxicity towards lipase, and hence, neither the rate constants of esterification/hydrolysis nor the equilibrium constant are affected by alcohol/acid ratio. (3) Both rate constants of esterification/hydrolysis and the equilibrium constant increase with temperature elevation, and their relationships agree with Arrhenius equation and Van't Hoff equation, respectively. (4) The esterification is endothermic and spontaneous. In total, the application of binary regression analysis for the developed model to study the enzymatic esterification kinetics is quite successful.