Kinetic modelling of laccase mediated delignification of Lantana camara.

Enzymatic delignification is seen as a green step in biofuels production owing to its specificity towards lignin and its proper understanding requires a kinetic study to decipher intricate details of the process such as thermodynamic parameters viz., activation energy, entropy change and enthalpy change. A system of two coupled kinetic models has been constructed to model laccase mediated delignification of Lantana camara. From the simulated output, activation energy was predicted to be 45.56 and 56.06 kJ/mol, entropy change was observed to be 1.08 × 10(2) and 1.05 × 10(2)cal/mol-K and enthalpy change was determined to be 3.33 × 10(4) and 3.20 × 10(4)cal/mol, respectively from Tessier's and Michaelis Menten model. While comparing the prediction efficiency, it was noticed that Tessier's model gave better performance. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted and it was observed that the model was most sensitive towards temperature dependent kinetic constants.