BENG$0017-$ Assignment $3$

As a new graduate, you have recently started your first employment with the industrial giant, Mitsubishi Chemical. Mitsubishi is committed to sustainability through their KEITEKI principles, and have a far$-$reaching vision is to produce platform chemicals from renewable feedstocks. As such, Mitsubishi has sourced a renewable supply of isobutyraldehyde from the emerging sustainable aviation fuel industry, where the isobutyraldehyde is produced via the gasification of biomass. This renewable supply of isobutyraldehyde needs to be oxidised to isobutyric acid using a novel isothermal enzyme reactor pioneered by Mitsubishi.

niformly mixed$)$

Figure $1-$ Isothermal enzyme reactor for the sustainable production of isobutyric acid from renewable isobutyraldehyde.

The slurry reactor is aerated with air to ensure the availability of excess $O_2($A$)($Figure $1),$ uniformly suspending a whole$-$cell solid catalyst within the variable reactor volume. The whole$-$cell catalyst contains an engineered P$450$ enzyme with a high kinetic rate for oxidising isobutyraldehyde to isobutyric acid at ambient operating temperature.

Reaction $1$ represents the enzyme$-$catalysed oxidation of isobutyraldehyde $($B$)$ to isobutyric acid $(P),$ simplified to equation $2$ for ease of notation.

$2*C_4{H}_{8}O+O_{2}2*C_4{H}_{8}O$

$2*B+A2*P$

first order?

second order? other forms?

At this early stage of sustainable process development, the Biochemistry Department has minimal insight into the model structure of the kinetic rate equation. Table $1$ details the representative process parameters the Biochemistry Department have used in their scaledown experiments in their laboratory.

Table $1-$ Process parameters for the isothermal enzyme reactor $($Figure $1).$

$\backslash$table$[[$Description$,$Value,Engineering Unit$],[$Concentrated isobutyraldehyde feed $(C_{b1}),24\mathrm{.}9,(mol)*d{m}^{-3}$