Since Eduard Büchner won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1907, the world has once again valued enzymes. Scientific research activities have become more frequent and in-depth. The natural properties of enzyme proteins have also been revealed. Several famous theories have been put forward as enzymes—the basis of theoretical research on catalysis.
Enzyme is a protein produced in organisms (animals, plants, microorganisms), which can catalyze the conversion of substances and is indispensable in all life activities. According to Grand View Research, the global enzyme market size was valued at USD 11.47 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% from 2022 to 2030.
The role and advantages of enzymes
According to the information released by the International Biochemistry-Molecular Biology Joint Nomenclature Committee, there are currently about 6,500 registered enzymes, which can be divided into seven types, such as oxidoreductase and hydrolase, according to the type of catalytic reaction. Enzymes serve a variety of purposes. They break down food, so nutrients are more easily absorbed; form body components from absorbed nutrients; obtain energy for physical activity; and generate or break down substances for biological defense.
Enzymatic production is used in many fields and gradually replaces chemical methods. Compared with chemical processes, enzymatic production is earth-friendly, does not produce unnecessary by-products, has high efficiency, and mainly uses microbial fermentation methods to produce products with unlimited resources.
Innovative application scenarios of enzyme preparations
1) Cheese flavoring
According to GIR (Global Info Research), the global revenue of enzyme-modified dairy products and cheese ingredients will be approximately US$803.1 million in 2021 and reach US$1187.1 million in 2028. Enzyme Modified Cheese (EMC) refers to cheese with a unique flavor made by adding enzyme preparations (mainly lipase and protease/peptidase) during cheese production and undergoing a series of reactions. Among them, the role of lipase is to decompose milk fat into fatty acids with dairy aroma, and protease/peptidase decomposes milk protein into amino acids with dairy flavor.
2) Improved coffee quality
The galactomannan in the coffee extract, at a high concentration, will cause the viscosity to rise sharply, making it challenging to filter the coffee liquid. It will form a colloid, precipitating other substances such as protein and caffeine. Hemicellulase (mannanase) can cut galactomannan at specific sites, making galactomannan small molecules, reducing viscosity, preventing precipitation, shortening filtration time, and improving filtration efficiency. Filtration rate.
3) Improve the bitterness of stevia sugar
The post-bitterness of stevia restricts its application in food and beverages. To improve its taste, the world’s major stevia suppliers have developed various improvement methods, such as selective breeding of stevia plants and genetic engineering. Enzyme preparations can also play an essential role in improving the taste of stevia.
4) More other applications
Enzyme preparations can also be used in tea, cakes, seasonings, and natural extract modification. For example, tannase can effectively prevent the cloudiness of tea after cooling and reduce the bitterness of tea; protease can improve the extraction of tea soup Yield, increase the content of free amino acids, and enhance the taste; glycosyltransferase can anti-aging for cakes, rice and so on.
Animals digest food with enzymes from the animal itself and the microbes in its gut. However, the digestive process of animals is not 100% efficient. 15-25% of pig and poultry feed cannot be digested and utilized by animals because the feed contains many anti-nutritional factors. These anti-nutritional factors will hinder the entire digestion process. Animals It lacks the enzymes that degrade certain feed ingredients.
The printing and dyeing industry urgently needs to resist pollution
The current pollution problem of China’s textile industry has reached the point where it needs to be solved urgently. Traditional textile production not only pollutes the environment, but also produces various harmful chemical substances, which cause damage to our bodies. The whole society should jointly resist polluting, Consumable production process.
According to the data released by the International Environmental Protection Earth Pledge (EarthPledge): “There are at least 8,000 kinds of chemicals in the process of making raw materials into textiles in the world, and 25% of pesticides are used to grow non-organic cotton. This will cause harm to humans and Irreversible damage to the environment, and 2/3 of the carbon emissions will continue to occur after the purchase of clothing.” Dozens of gallons of water are consumed in the process of processing clothing fabrics, especially the fabric dyeing process, the dyeing of synthetic materials 2.4 trillion gallons of water are required.
China’s environmental statistics show that among the key surveyed industrial sectors, the textile industry is a major polluter. The discharge of wastewater from the textile industry ranks among the top among 41 industries in the country, and the discharge of wastewater from the printing and dyeing process accounts for more than 70% of the discharge of textile wastewater.
In addition, as an important source of water pollution, China’s textile industry also consumes huge water resources, lagging far behind the rest of the world in terms of water resource utilization efficiency. According to the “Report on the Prevention and Control of Industrial Pollution in National Key Industries” published by China Environmental Science Press, in the case of the production of similar unit products, the average content of pollutants in printing and dyeing wastewater in my country is 2-3 times that of foreign countries, and the water consumption is as high as 3-4 At the same time, printing and dyeing wastewater is not only the main pollutant in the industry, but also the sludge generated by printing and dyeing wastewater has problems in treatment.
Among them, the pretreatment of printing and dyeing materials is particularly serious due to the use of a large amount of caustic soda. “It needs to be treated with caustic soda before dyeing, steam it to harden it, and then use hydrochloric acid to neutralize the caustic soda, which discharges a lot of waste water.”
Biological enzyme preparations solve printing and dyeing problems
The traditional pretreatment process of printing and dyeing includes five steps of singeing, desizing, refining, bleaching and mercerizing. Although some foreign companies had previously produced enzyme preparations for pre-treatment of printing and dyeing, they were only used for desizing.
Enzyme preparation is a high-efficiency, low-consumption, non-toxic biocatalyst, and the biological treatment method based on enzyme preparation is an ideal way to solve the high pollution and high consumption in the printing and dyeing industry.
The enzymatic desizing and refining is completed at one time, which not only saves the high temperature of the traditional treatment process, but also, the enzymatic treatment temperature is carried out at a low temperature, which greatly reduces the steam consumption in the pretreatment process and significantly saves steam energy consumption. Compared with the traditional process In comparison, it saves 25%-50% of steam and 40% of electricity.
The biological enzymatic pretreatment process replaces the caustic soda desizing and caustic soda refining process in the traditional process, which means that the biological fermentation product can replace caustic soda, refining agent and other chemical preparations. Therefore, it can greatly reduce the pH value and COD value of the treated wastewater, and refine The effective replacement of chemical preparations such as chemical agents can reduce the COD value in pre-treated wastewater by more than 60%.
“Biological compound enzyme preparation has the characteristics of mild treatment conditions, high efficiency, and good specificity. The application of biological enzyme treatment has almost no damage to cotton fibers, and has a high-efficiency degradation effect on starch size and PVA size on gray fabrics. A good desizing effect was achieved.”
