ABSTRACT

Palm-based specialty oleochemicals are industrial chemicals from palm-oil that are highly priced with high profit margins. Enzyme catalyzed syntheses of these chemicals are preferable as compared to their chemical counterpart as the process are green and the products are pure and biodegradable. Lipase-catalyzed syntheses of specialty oleochemicals were carried out in our laboratory. The oleochemicals include amino acid esters, fatty alkanolamides, fatty esteramines, palm–based wax esters and medium chain triglycerides. Studies on the optimization of the reaction condition were carried out. Effects of parameters influencing the reactions including temperature, time course, substrate molar ratio and enzyme amount were studied. Study on each of the reaction system was carried out according to the characteristics of the reaction.