Edith Cerbelaud

Enzymatic hydrolysis of adiponitrile into 5-cyano valeric acid, an intermediate for nylon 6

Publisher Summary An industrial process must be economic and safe for the environment. The chemical hydrolysis of nitrile in acid is well known. Nearly all nitriles react with either basic or acid catalysts, but considerable quantities of inorganic salts are always produced as by-products. The only way to suppress these by-products is to produce the ammonium carboxylate under neutral pH and then to recover the ammonia by dissociation of the salt between the weak base and acid. It is possible to design an excellent catalyst for a bulk product such as caprolactam. The first advantage of the biocatalysis in this route is able to carry out this reaction at neutral pH. The second is to selectively obtain the α,ω-cyanoacid starting from the α,ω-dinitrile. No other type of catalysis can do this.