Concepts for flow chemistry with whole-cell biocatalysts

By combining two fields in chemistry - continuous flow processing and biocatalysis - efficient, stable and cost-effective processes can be realised. On the biocatalyst side, tremendous progress in the rational design of recombinant whole-cell catalysts could be achieved in the past years. Meanwhile, the combination of these powerful catalysts with continuous reactor concepts is beginning to flourish as well. Many processes have been reported in the past years applying such whole-cell catalysts immobilised in packed bed reactors, on walls of microchannels or as living and growing cells in biofilm reactors. In this review, we aim to present and discuss the current state of the art of these different and at the same time often complementary tools.