Recent progress on deep eutectic solvents in biocatalysis

Pei Xu, Gao-Wei Zheng, Min-Hua Zong, Ning Li, Wen-Yong Lou

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are eutectic mixtures of salts and hydrogen bond donors with melting points low enough to be used as solvents. DESs have proved to be a good alternative to traditional organic solvents and ionic liquids (ILs) in many biocatalytic processes. Apart from the benign characteristics similar to those of ILs (e.g., low volatility, low inflammability and low melting point), DESs have their unique merits of easy preparation and low cost owing to their renewable and available raw materials. To better apply such solvents in green and sustainable chemistry, this review firstly describes some basic properties, mainly the toxicity and biodegradability of DESs. Secondly, it presents several valuable applications of DES as solvent/co-solvent in biocatalytic reactions, such as lipase-catalyzed transesterification and ester hydrolysis reactions. The roles, serving as extractive reagent for an enzymatic product and pretreatment solvent of enzymatic biomass hydrolysis, are also discussed. Further understanding how DESs affect biocatalytic reaction will facilitate the design of novel solvents and contribute to the discovery of new reactions in these solvents.