Use of phospholipase enzymes to reduce the environmental impact of traditional chemical processes

Abstract

Phospholipases are one of the most important classes of industrial enzymes and are currently used for food, biofuels, and technical applications. Enzymatic oil degumming is the process where oil is cleared from phospholipids using enzymes. In the last two decades, this has been proven to be an efficient technology to reduce the use of water and energy, and to lower the volume of generated waste. Additionally, enzymatic degumming can potentially produce extra oil with a market value of $1 billion. In addition to its use in the food industry, the fast-growing demand for biofuels urges the vegetable oil-processing industry to adopt cleaner technologies to mitigate environmental pollution caused by chemical refining processes. In this chapter, we describe the recent advances in the use of Type A, B, and C phospholipases to hydrolyze phospholipids present in vegetable oil. For each enzyme, improvements in the benefit-cost ratio have grown to reach the maturity stage needed to facilitate the widespread adoption of this technology.