Giraldo Gómez, Gloria InésDíaz Ramos, Margarita2015-03-112015-03-1120131909-0455http://hdl.handle.net/10567/1256Introduction. Waste water from dairy industries has a high fat content. This fat, due to its slow degradation, makes its biological treatment difficult and brings operational problems Objective. To evaluate the efficiency of an immobilized lipase from Candida rugosa in an organoclay, for the treatment of waste waters from a dairy industry. materials and methods. An immobilized lipase from Candida rugosa was used to hydrolyze the fat contained in a sample of waste water from the process of making cheese. The Michaelis-Menten (Km) cons-tant and the maximum reaction speed (Vmax) were obtained through nonlinear regression. The level of total fat content reduction and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) were determined as results of the enzymatic pre-treatment. Finally, the operational stability of the bio catalytic system was evaluated by the reuse of the immobilized enzyme in three reaction cycles. Results. Km values were 421,71 ± 40,54 and 1513,79 ± 239,03 ppm, while Vmax were 10,74±1,03 and 0,30±0,05 μmol/mL*min for the free and the immobilized enzyme, resectively. A 70% reduction of total fat and 19, 20% of the COD were obtained after the enzymatic hydrolysis. The fat reduction remained close to 67% after three reaction cycles using the immobilized lipase. Conclusion. The results obtained demonstrated the potential of using immobilized lipases in the pre-treatment of waste water with a high fat content.esCorporación Universitaria LasallistaÁrea Metropolitana del Valle de AburráIndustria lácteaContaminación industrialAguas residualesAguas residuales industrialesTratamiento de aguas residualesArticle