Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) is an enzyme able to catalyze chemical reaction, however when it is used as a free enzyme, it cannot be recovered from reaction medium. One of the alternatives is to immobilize the enzymes on a support which allows the maintenance of their catalytic activities. The purpose of this paper was to immobilize the CALB on MCM-48 using the ionic solid [C16MI]Cl as structure director. 22 CCRD (Central Composite Rotational Design) was proposed to analyze the influence of the variables like enzyme mass (0.059 to 0.341 g) and ionic solid concentration (0.59 to 3.41%) in the enzyme immobilization process to obtain the maximum esterification activity in order to optimize the process. After immobilization, the study results showed that the enzymes exhibited improvement of thermal (40, 60 and 80 ºC) and storage stability (90 days), besides the possibility to reuse of the enzyme up to 10 times, showing residual activity of 50%.

The objective of this work was the immobilization of the enzyme Candida antarctica lipase B (CAL B) using the sol-gel method of immobilization and three different initiators of the polymerization reaction: one acid (HCl), one basic (NH4OH) and the other nucleophilic (HBr). Tetraethylorthosilicate was used as the silica precursor. The influence of the additive PEG 1500 on immobilization was assessed. The efficiency of the process was evaluated considering the esterification activity of the xerogels. The immobilization process provided enhanced thermal stability, storage and operational aspects relative to the free enzyme. Storage temperature proved one of the main variables to be considered in the process, with the xerogels stored under refrigeration showing better results in terms of residual activity (nearly 200 days with ≥ 90% residual activity of basic and nucleophilic xerogels) when compared with storage at ambient temperature (nearly 40 days). The results demonstrated the possibility of reuse of derivatives and a greater number of cycles (nine), considering a residual activity of 50%.