Flow Biocatalytic Processes in Ionic Liquids and Supercritical Fluids

The use of ionic liquids (ILs) and supercritical fluids (SCFs), as alternative non-aqueous reaction media for carrying out selective biocatalytic transformations, has substantially increased the opportunities for developing clean and sustainable chemical processes with industrial interest, which were enhanced by combination with continuous flow systems. The excellent suitability of ILs to over-stabilize enzymes, combined with the excellences of supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) to dissolve and transport chemicals, provides useful synergies for designing continuous clean synthetic approaches, that directly provide pure products by using appropriate reactor (e. g. membrane reactors). Several examples (i.e. DKR of sec-alcohols, synthesis of biodiesel, etc.), where the use of continuous flow techniques with multi-catalytic synthesis are combined into a single continuous operation, are provided in this paper.