Evaluation of β-galactosidase adsorption into pre-treated carbon

In this work we investigated the use of pre-treated carbon for the adsorption of β-galactosidase. Adsorption experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of the pre-treatment of carbon, temperature, initial β-galactosidase and carbon concentrations in the immobilization kinetic and efficiency. The pre-treatment of carbon improved the binding capacity of carbon. The highest immobilization efficiency was 54% after 5 min of adsorption using 1 wt% of pre-treated carbon, 30 °C, pH 4.5, and initial enzyme concentration of 0.12 g L−1. The results obtained in this study are promising, because the carbon is a low cost support and can be used to immobilize β-galactosidase in a simple and fast way, being possible to obtain similar efficiency of expensive supports.