Preparation of homochiral cyanohydrins using an enzyme-membrane-reactor

Nowadays, the technical application of synthetic membranes is limited to separation problems, where the membrane simply acts as a high grade filter material. However, mass transfer in biological systems demonstrates that a membrane effectively is able to separate also on a molecular scale. In living cells, this is accomplished through self assembling systems of lipids and proteins. Specific permeation of substrates and bioproducts is done by functional biological membranes. Some aspects of non-specific transport through lipid membranes and of specific transport through selective channels might be useful in the design of special property membranes for technical separations on the molecular scale. Separations on a molecular scale typically are limited due to low selectivities of polymer membranes. In this work, the fundamental elements for the design of natural membranes are applied to the development of different special property membranes.