192-197The esterification of lauric acid with lauryl alcohol was studied using lipase from Porcine pancreas, with particular
emphasis on the effect of the pertinent variables and kinetic aspects of the reaction. The reaction was studied in eight
different solvents having hydrophobicity (the logarithm of octanol-water partition coefficient, log P) values ranging from
0.6 to 3.5 with constant water content in the reaction mixture and n-hexane was the most suitable solvent. The initial rates of
the reaction were attempted to correlate with solvent properties and a significant good correlation was obtained with solvent
hydrophobicity (log P) and water solubility (log Sw). The kinetics of the esterification reaction conformed to the so-called
Ping-Pong Bi-Bi mechanism with alcohol inhibition
