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.
Keywords: E factor; biocatalysis; bioprocess engineering; cGAS; green chemistry; life cycle assessment.