This work describes the use of clavulanic acid (CA) precipitation as the final step in the process of purification of CA from fermentation broth as an alternative to conventional methods employed traditionally. The purpose of this study was to use a stable intermediate (t-octylamine) between the conversion of CA to its salt form (potassium clavulanate), thereby enabling the resulting intermediate (amine salt of clavulanic acid) to improve the purification process and maintain the stability of the resulting potassium clavulanate. To this end, response surface methodology was employed to optimize the precipitation step. For the first reaction, five temperatures (6.6 to 23.4 ºC), concentrations of clavulanic acid in organic solvent (6.6 to 23.4 mg/mL) and t-octylamine inflow rates (0.33 to 1.17 drop/min) were selected based on a central composite rotatable design (CCRD). For the second reaction, five temperatures (11.6 to 28.4 ºC), concentrations of clavulanic acid amine salt in organic solvent (8.2 to 41.8 mg/mL) and concentrations of potassium 2-ethylhexanoate (0.2 to 1.2 molar) were also selected using CCRD. From these results, precipitation conditions were selected and applied to the purification of CA from the fermentation broth, obtaining a yield of 72.37%.

Enzymes have been extensively used in organic solvents to catalyze a variety of reactions of biological and industrial significance. In this work, the characteristics of free and immobilized inulinase were investigated in buffered solutions of butyl acetate. The influences of the organic solvent content on the optimal temperature and pH, the stabilities to temperature and pH and the kinetic parameters were systematically evaluated. The results showed that the organic solvent content had no effect on the optimal pH, either in the free or immobilized inulinase. For the immobilized enzyme, the optimal temperatures ranged from 55ºC to 60ºC, depending on the content of butyl acetate. At higher butyl acetate content, the stability of the immobilized enzyme increased for both pH and temperature. The organic solvent showed the tendency to increase the values of the kinetic parameters Km and v max for both free and immobilized inulinase.

The conditions for maximization enzymatic activity were determined using experimental design and inulinase from Kluyveromyces marxianus ATCC 16045. The effects of substrate concentration (sucrose and inulin), pH and temperature on inulinase activity were verified using four factorial design and surface response analysis. Using sucrose as substrate. It has bean shown that the effects sucrose on enzymatic activity is not statistically significant and the best condition for the highest activity (110 U/mL) was achieved with temperature between 60°C and 68°C and pH between 4.5 and 5.0. Using inulin as substrate it was verified that temperature is the only variable statistically significant and the maximum activity was 7.3 U/mL at temperature between 50°C and 51°C.

The enzyme inulinase is used to produce oligosaccharides and fructose, with up to 95% fructose in a single stage of inulina hydrolysis. With in the aim to purify the enzyme, studies on the conditions of enzyme adsorption in an expanded-bed column were conducted using phosphate and tris-HCl buffers. The inulinase used in this work was obtained from Kluyveromyces marxianus NRRL Y-7571 by fermentation in an industrial medium. Using the anionic resin Streamline DEAE, the adsorption equilibrium time was determined. It was observed that the adsorption isotherm follows the Langmuir model; the parameters for the maximum amount of adsorbed inulinase (Qm) and the dissociation constant (k d) were determined. With 0.05 M sodium phosphate buffer at pH 6.0, the parameter values 1428 UI/mL and 2 UI/mL with a correlation coefficient of 0.96 were obtained. For 0.02 M tris-HCl buffer at pH 7.5, the same parameters were 5000 UI/mL and 0.05 UI/mL with a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The best purification conditions for the fixed bed were shown to be a 0.4 M phosphate buffer with NaCl as eluter, a purification factor of 11.4, and a recovery yield of up to 79%.