Design of a nonuniformly distributed biocatalyst

The properties of a nonuniformly distributed biocatalyst, where the active enzymes are immobilized on the exterior or the interior portions o a solid support, are compared with those of a conventional biocatalyst which is uniformly distributed in a spherical geometry. To investigate the performance of nonuniformly distributed biocatalysts their effectiveness factors are computed and compared for six different enzyme distribution configurations: one‐half core, one‐half shell, one‐third center space, one‐third middle annulus, one‐third outer shell, and the uniformly distributed. According to the results of numerical analysis, the biocatalyst performance of the exterior "shell" configuration is always far more effective for the immobilized enzymes with positive order reaction kinetics such as Michaelis‐Menten and competitive product inhibition. However, in the case of negative order enzymatic reaction kinetics such as substrate inhibition, the interior "core" configuration of the biocatalyst can render far greater enzyme utilization efficiency.