Mini project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Mini project - Essay Example However, using immobilized enzymes very small size makes it difficult to separate them out of the product. Therefore, industries generally optimize the reaction rate and the ease of separation while determining which particle size to employ. The present report explores how various process parameters influence the particle size of chitosan microspheres. Data has been collected on how various parameters determine the size of immobilized enzyme particles. It should however be noted that data will exhibit variability even though the investigation is carried out under the same test conditions because the particle shape may not always be a perfect sphere and thus the measurement may have some degree of variability depending on particle position during measurement. The experiment is aimed at determining the conditions required for making a chitosan enzyme particle of a specific size by employing statistical techniques. Four parameters have been incorporated because of their influence on par ticle size, namely – Tween 80 concentration, stirring rate, glutaraldehyde concentration and chitosan concentration. As seen in table 1, different particle sizes of chitosan obtained for two different stirring rates. For speeds at 1000rpm, three peaks have been found, at 0.40, 0.41 and 0.43. This may be indicative of contamination in the sample. Similarly for stirring rate of 500rpm, peaks were observed at 0.38 and 0.40. The data for both stirring rates appeared to be skewed towards a smaller particle size. The particle diameter ranged between 0.381 and 0.441 for stirring rate of 500rpm, and between 0.386 and 0.453 for stirring rate of 1000rpm. The plot for 500rpm stirring rate has a lift value at 0.4065, lesser than that for 1000rpm. It can be seen from the plot that 75% of data on lift is between the values of 0.3955 and 0.419 while the values for good data should lie between 0.36025 and 0.45425. The plot for 1000rpm