The performance of immobilized glucose isomerase supported by shrimp chitin in various types of reactors

Five different types of reactors were employed for glucose isomerization using shrimp shell as the support on which to immobilize the glucose isomerase. The Michaelis-Menten constants and effective diffusivity of glucose in the immobilized enzyme bed were experimentally determined and used in a theoretical analysis of the radial-flow reactor. The fractional conversions of the radial-flow, fluidizedbed, and packed-bed reactors with the same -residence time were found experimentally to be almost the same. This result reveals that the use of radial-flow and fluidized-bed reactors for this immobilized enzyme system is highly feasible.