Lipase-catalyzed ethanolysis of fish oils: multi-response kinetics.

The kinetics of the lipase-catalyzed (Pseudomonas cepacia) ethanolysis of fish oil has been studied in a batch reactor using menhaden oil, tuna oil, and acylglycerol mixtures derived from menhaden oil. Multi-response models derived from a generalized Michaelis-Menten mechanism were developed to describe the rates of formation of ethyl esters of the primary fatty acids present in the precursor oil. A first-order model for deactivation of the lipase was fit simultaneously to one of the data sets.