Enzymes have earned their reputation as a hero ingredient in laundry detergents, breaking down specific stain types and saving energy by enabling washing at lower temperatures and shorter cycles.
But enzymes also come with some practical challenges. These natural materials are proteins, which can be unstable and highly sensitive to environmental factors like temperature and pH, as well as other ingredients in detergent formulations like surfactants.
Because it can be a long and winding journey from the day a detergent formula leaves the factory floor to the moment a consumer adds their last measure to a load of laundry, maintaining enzyme stability is critical. It ensures these hero ingredients remain effective to the last dose.
At IFF, we were the first to apply protein engineering to build better laundry enzymes. Today, we continue to advance our innovations to redefine industry standards, including efforts to deliver long-lasting performance with fewer ingredients.
Proteases are enzymes that break down proteins into smaller polypeptides and amino acids. They’re a crucial part of attacking protein-based stains like milk, blood, and egg. However, they don’t just break down proteins in food stains, they can also cannibalize other enzymes, including themselves.
One of the core challenges is that proteases break down proteins, including other enzymes, into small fragments.
Many detergents also have an amylase and a mannanase that help breakdown starch and mannan-based stains, such as ice cream or chocolate pudding. You need all three enzymes to be stabilized against inactivation by proteolytic degradation. And that means having an enzyme with superior conformational stability, so the protease is not able to bind onto and then clip it or hydrolyze it.”
TOM GRAYCAR Technical Fellow, IFF
Enzymes that are easy to formulate with and stay active for longer are important for every entity along the supply chain. So, IFF’s team of scientists knew they needed to apply their extensive experience with enzymes to tackle the stability problem.
The goal was to find a way to make a protease for liquid laundry detergents that is naturally stable. This breakthrough would not only keep detergents working at optimal effectiveness but also reduce or eliminate the need for additional chemical stabilizers in detergent formulations—reducing cost and ingredient lists, which lowers environmental impact for detergent manufacturers.
The key to finding a solution involved thinking about how to solve the problem in a way that delivered a long-term solution. The industry standard has been to add an additional chemical stabilizer — a protease inhibitor— to keep the protease from degrading itself or other enzymes in the formulation. But inhibitors need to be proven safe for the consumer and environment, and regulators can restrict or ban inhibitors. So, while many detergent manufacturers have had options to increase stability, they have lacked an ideal option when it came to creating formulas that would maintain their effectiveness.
We needed to come up with an enzyme that could compete but didn’t rely on having that were restricted by regulators in the detergent formulation. Could protein engineering be used successfully to solve the problem? What we learned is that when you stabilize the conformational structure, an engineered enzyme can be robust enough and eliminate the need for stabilizers.”
THIJS KAPER Senior Lead Scientist, IFF
Finding the ideal solution involved unleashing the power of IFF’s deep expertise in protein engineering and high-throughput screening.
Enzymes have a so-called conformational structure, a defined 3-D arrangement, which can change in response to various factors impacting its catalytic efficiency and specificity. Proteins with conformationally less stable structures provide accessible areas for protease to bind to, clip the protein, and ultimately deactivate it.
The process of engineering a tighter, more stable conformation began with the IFF scientists taking advantage of both a ready selection of good starting enzymes and the complete data sets IFF has for these enzymes.
It also involved testing thousands of possible changes they could make to improve the structure of the enzymes by using unique combinations of amino acid alterations. During their exploration of the thousands of potential mutations in the enzymes, the scientists focused not just on stability, but also superior cleaning performance and manufacturability.
The result was the PREFRENZ® P 400 stable liquid enzyme, a protease, that delivers a combination of long-lasting stain removal performance with the type of enzymatic compatibility that allows for maximum flexibility when it comes to making new formulations.
At IFF we are very good at looking for the different properties we need in parallel: the manufacturability, the stability, and the cleaning power.”
IFF scientists have also developed innovative technology to ensure the stability of enzymes in granular detergents.
With the ENZOGUARD platform they’re harnessing advanced fluid bed coating technology, which creates multi-layer protection around an enzyme. This technique involves fluidizing substrate particles in a heated air stream while atomizing a liquid coating material into the particle flow.
As the particles pass through the atomized liquid, droplets collect on the surface, spreading and drying to form a protective layer. By repeating this process, additional layers are added, creating a robust, multi-layer structure.
This layering allows for more precise control over the formulation, where each layer can serve a specific function, like protection of the enzyme or controlled release. For example, stabilizers in one layer can help shield the enzyme from environmental stressors, while other layers may control moisture levels or optimize enzyme activity.
The stability provided by fluid bed coating improves enzyme performance by ensuring enzymes remain active over extended periods, even under harsh conditions. And that means both retailers and consumers can trust that the enzyme activity will be consistent throughout the product’s lifetime. With ENZOGUARD, the enzymes aren’t simply better for longer. They also dissolve quickly, are well-distributed throughout the laundry product, and generally result in better overall performance
IFF’s innovative work in the field of enzymes is setting a new standard in the laundry detergent industry, combining cutting-edge protein engineering and advanced formulation techniques to deliver more stable, longer-lasting products.
By working with nature, the scientists behind these enzyme solutions are delivering a host of benefits, transforming the way detergents perform while also reducing the need for additional stabilizers in detergent formulations. And these shorter, “cleaner” ingredient labels allow formulators to maintain their green credentials.
But most importantly, nature is also the key to products that deliver superior performance without excessive costs, which means that stable enzymes make the formulator, the consumer, and the environment winners.