Analytical solution of enzyme catalysis in calcium alginate beads

A mathematical model for a fixed bed immobilized enzyme reactor is developed to find the analytical expressions of dimensionless substrate and product concentrations inside the biocatalyst particle. The modeling and simulation of starch hydrolysis using immobilize α- amylase is considered for this study. In this work Michaelis-Menten kinetics have been used. The effect of substrate flow rate and initial concentration on intra-particle diffusion has been taken into consideration. The performance of the system is found to be affected by the substrate flow rate and concentrations by means of analytical expressions. The reaction is controlled by the reaction rate parameters and other parameters involved in the model. The model reaction is a nonlinear second order differential equation simulated based on the experimental data for steady state conditions. The analytical expressions are derived by using He's variational iteration method and it is found that it gives satisfactory results for substrate and product concentration profiles within the biocatalyst bead.