Kinetics of enzymatic cetyl palmitate production by esterification with fermented solid of Burkholderia contaminans in the presence of organic solvent.

Cetyl palmitate was produced by the esterification of palmitic acid with cetyl alcohol using n-hexane as solvent and a fermented solid of Burkholderia contaminans as catalyst. Effects of temperature (35–55 °C) and alcohol:acid molar ratio (0.5:1–2:1) on the reaction kinetics were evaluated for a fixed amount of catalyst (10 wt% related to the total mass of substrates) and a stirring speed (600 rpm) that was sufficiently high to avoid convective mass transfer limitations in the bulk phase. The temperature did not to influence the reaction rates and conversions above 90% were obtained for all temperatures after 12 h of reaction using a stoichiometric ratio (1:1) between the substrates. The prepared catalyst was recycled and reused in seven consecutive reactions of 8 h each and lost around 40% of its initial activity during the process. A Ping-Pong Bi–Bi kinetic model was proposed to represent the system reactions and was satisfactorily fitted to the experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]