Solvent-Free Production of Ethylene Glycol Monostearate through Enzymatic Esterification

This work reports new results about the solvent-free enzymatic production of ethylene glycol monostearate, an industrially important emollient ester conventionally produced by a chemical route. For this purpose, reactions were carried out using two commercial immobilized lipases, evaluating the effect of temperature, agitation, and enzyme concentration on the reaction conversion. It was shown that, for most tested conditions, reaction conversions around 100% were achieved. The reuse of the enzyme was also evaluated with satisfactory results up to four enzyme cycles. System scale-up by 9-fold allowed reaching conversions of up to 99%. Chemical analyzes showed that the product obtained through enzymatic synthesis presented very good characteristics, which makes the enzymatic esterification process employed in this work an interesting and promising route for possible application at industrial scale.