Challenges in the production of hydrolysate and other milk-derived products center on the efficient generation of a high-yield product

Enzymes enable reaction processes to take place under less harsh conditions than chemical-only methods, increase product specificity, and reduce the difficulty of reaction processing and waste cleanup. The use of enzymes is not without its own challenges. The primary use limitation is the cost of the enzyme, as enzymes are refined and purified protein products. Lower-cost enzyme options are available, but typically sacrifice purity and have broader batch-to-batch variability as a tradeoff to cost. The other significant limitation is that enzymes in their purified form are limited to a single batch reaction. Recovery of enzyme from the reaction mixture for potential reuse is difficult since the substrates, products, and the enzymes all possess similar physical properties. Other cost-drivers are tied to the need to inactivate the enzyme to stop a reaction, and removal of the enzyme from the product if IT may cause an allergic or toxic response.to enable the reuse of soluble enzymes, studies have investigated ultrafiltration membranes scaled to retain the larger-size enzymes and simultaneously act as the first purification step and binding enzymes to amembrane to combine the reaction and separation processes. These membrane-based solutions demonstrated efficiency gains, but suffered from increased enzyme deactivation through shear and thermal stress, enzyme leakage into the product, and membrane fouling. As an alternative, enzymes were immobilized on solid supports such as glass, agarose, and silica. Immobilizing enzymes to these supports permitted improved regulation of the reactions, increased enzyme stability, reduced pressure drop issues in the reactors, improved separation of product from enzyme, and reduced contamination. However, the value gained by these improvements was offset by the high cost of the support material. The technology developed on this sbir similarly seeks to reduce enzyme-related operational costs through immobilization of enzymes. This effort will focus on bead-like pellets made from low-cost and recycled BIO-waste materials as the enzyme support. Using these robust and low-cost support materials can enable the use of higher-quality enzyme preparations and leads to more uniform products and simplified post-reaction processes. Similarly, the pellets retain the enzyme so stopping the reaction or separating them from the reactor involves simply filtering them from the reaction solution. Existing plants can be adapted through using abolt-on collection system. The phase i goal is tovalidate the capability of our patented immobizyme™ technology as a solution for the two primary enzyme-based reactions used by whey processors: protein hydrolysis and lactose removal. Data from this effort will demonstrate that this technology is easily applied to whey processing and will beneficially support the needed enzyme reactions.