Saccharification Kinetics at Optimised Conditions of Tapioca by Glucoamylase Immobilised on Mesostructured Cellular Foam Silica

Abstract

As insoluble substrates such as tapioca can be used to make chemical compounds, saccharification of tapioca by glucoamylase immobilised on mesostructured cellular foam (MCF) silica using Box-Behnken Design of experiment was conducted to optimize this process so that the experimental results can be used to develop large-scale operations. The experiments gave dextrose equivalent (DE) values of 6.15–69.50% (w/w). Factors of pH and temperature affected the process highly. The suggested quadratic polynomial model is significant and considered acceptable (R2 = 99.78%). Justification of the model confirms its validity and adequacy where the predicted DE shows a good agreement with the experimental results. The kinetic constants (Vmax, KM) produced by the immobilised enzyme differed highly from the values yielded by free glucoamylase indicating reduction of substrate access to enzyme active sites had occurred.