A new enzymatic process for the treatment of phenolic pollutants

This work aimed to develop a new economic enzymatic process to treat the phenolic pollutants using pure tyrosinase in stirred vessel and adopting temperature (T), pH, rotational speed (N), initial phenol (C P,o) and enzyme (C T) concentrations as independent variables. Experimental data of the residual phenol concentration (C P) were used to calculate the oxidation efficiency (η), initial oxidation rate (-r o) and time required to reach the end of reaction (t) that were selected as the responses. Under the optimal conditions (T = 45°C, pH 6.6, N = 400 rpm, C P,o = 100 ppm and C T = 50 U/mL), η was 88.1%, -r o = 10.2 mg L-1 min-1, t = 40 min. These results suggested that tyrosinase-rich crude extracts from vegetable byproducts could be quite promising.