Effect of inactivation and reactivation conditions on activity recovery of enzyme catalysts

Enzymes are labile catalysts with reduced half-life time that can be however improved by immobilization and, furthermore, already inactivated catalyst can be recovered totally or partially, therefore allowing the large scale application of enzymes as process catalysts. In recent years a few studies about reactivation of enzyme catalysts have been published as a strategy to prolong the catalyst lifetime. Reported results are very good, making this strategy an interesting tool to be applied to industrial process. These studies have been focused in the evaluation of different variables that may have a positive impact both in the rate and level of activity recovery, being then critical variables for conducting the reactivation process at productive scale. The present work summarizes the studies done about reactivation strategies considering different variables: type of immobilization, enzyme-support interaction, level of catalyst inactivation prior to reactivation, temperature and presence of modulators.