Objective: Lipases are often used in immobilized form, but commercial immobilized lipases are costly. An alternative is to produce lipases in solid-state fermentation, dry the solids and then use the "dry fermented solids" (DFS) directly. We produced DFS by growing Burkholderia contaminans on a mixture of sugarcane bagasse and sunflower seed meal and used the DFS to esterify oleic acid with ethanol in subcritical and supercritical CO2 at 40 °C.
Results: Compared to a control without CO2 at atmospheric pressure, subcritical CO2 at 30 bar improved esterification activity 1.2-fold. Higher pressures, including supercritical pressures up to 150 bar, reduced activity to less than 80% of the control. At 30 bar, the esterification activity was improved a further 1.8-fold with the addition of 9% water (i.e. 9 g water per 100 g oleic acid) to the reaction medium.
Conclusion: A subcritical CO2 atmosphere, with the addition of a small amount of water, improved the esterification activity of DFS containing lipases of Burkholderia contaminans.
Keywords: Burkholderia contaminans; Ethyl oleate; Lipases; Solid-state fermentation; Subcritical carbon dioxide; Supercritical carbon dioxide.