SCALE-UP OF MEMBRANE FIXED ENZYME REACTORS: MODELLING AND EXPERIMENTS.

An improved capillary membrane fixed enzyme reactor (CAMFER) model developed earlier was extensively tested by experiments with laboratory and industrial hollow fiber modules for lactose hydrolysis by beta -galactosidase. Two capillary internal diameters were used. The industrial cartridges were built in the authors' pilot-plant LACTOHYD. The scale-up factor in terms of the nominal membrane area was 100. The agreement of the model predictions and experiments was excellent. The importance of the hydrodynamic and kinetic analysis for the meaningful model predictions was shown. The ability of such a membrane reactor to handle untreated whey or skim-milk was demonstrated in the laboratory as well as in the pilot-plant.