The Industrial Uses of Enzymes

The Industrial Uses of Enzymes

Enzymes are catalysts made up of polymers of Amino Acids, and they’re

very useful inside and outside our body. Enzymes, like other

catalysts, speed up chemical reactions, and over 700 of their kind are

known in today’s world, since being discovered in the 1850s. There are

many industrial applications of enzymes, and they speed up processes

that could take years to be completed.

FERMENTATION:

Making beer and whisky was known to humans for the past 8,000 years.

This process is known as Fermentation, where yeast feeds on a certain

kind of fruit, like grapes, to produce alcohol. The yeast produces

enzymes, one of them known as ‘zymase’, which further speed up the

process of Fermentation. Without the enzyme, fermentation would take

almost an year to be completed, because the yeast would then depend on

natural conditions such as sunlight to remove the proteins from the

Grapefruit. The zymase also quickly changes simple sugars into ethanol

and carbon dioxide.

This shows the process of making of wine, where first the grapes are

crushed to get juice, then they are stored in containers containing

yeast, which ferment the juice, and produce ethanol and carbon dioxide

gas, then the wine is stored in containers to remove any impurities.

This is for usually a month, and then comes the bottling of the drink.

Without enzymes produced by yeast, the fermenting of grape juice would

take almost an year, while with the enzyme it takes no more than 2

months.

CONFECTIONERY:

These are processed foods based on sweeteners, like sugar and honey.

Candy is the most common of all confection areas, with almost all of

these containing many enzymes in their production stages. Enzymes are

very important in this field, as they help break down starch syrup

into glucose syrup, with the help of carbohydrases. This helps our

system accept the food more easily, and involves lesser complications.

Other than this, enzymes help change glucose into fructose, used in