In-House Projects


Studies on Selected Organic Reactions using Free and Immobilized Enzyme System


Fatty oil is a compound of glycerol and fatty acids. Each molecule of glycerol combines with three molecules of fatty acids to form an ester. Fatty oils give chemical reaction such as saponification, alcoholysis, acidolysis, halogenation, hydrogenation, addition, interesterification, oxidation etc. Enzymes are biological catalysts, consisting of protein. Unlike ordinary chemical catalysts, enzymes have the ability to catalyze reactions under very mild conditions in aqueous or organic solvents at normal temperature and pressure, thus reducing the possibility of damage to heat resistive substrates and also reducing energy requirements and corrosion effects of the process. Enzymes have high substrate specificity leading to a low content of undesirable by-products in the reaction solution, thus decreasing not only material costs but also downstream environmental burdens. An in-house research programme was undertaken with the selected natural polymer chitosan for support materials with the following objectives :
  •     Immobilization of lipase on natural polymer i.e. Chitosan
  •     Comparison of the free and immobilized enzyme for esterification and transesterification reaction

Immobilization of the porcine pancreatic lipase on the chitosan by covalent coupling was carried out. The stability of free and immobilized enzyme at different pH and temperature was also compared.

Investigation on Extraction of Some Value Added Products from Natural Resources


On the basis of in-house study done before on the extraction of Salicornia seeds oil by soxhlet extraction procedure using hexane and the extracted oil and subsequent analysis of their fatty acids profile, which revealed the seed oil content in the range of 28 to 33 %, a new study focusing on the effect of geoclimatic condition on oil quality of Salicornia brachiata was undertaken. Two varieties based on different geo-climatic conditions of places like Mundra and Hathab were selected.