The flow biocatalyzed reactions optimized within the project showed relevant advantages with respect to traditional chemical procedures. In particular, they fulfill all requirements to diminish environmental burden, reduce costs, and increase safety that are necessary to increment the sustainability of manufacturing processes. Non-hazardous materials were employed under safe reaction conditions with reduced risk and without toxic waste production. Flow chemistry, which has been recently introduced to advance the sustainability of organic synthesis, dramatically sped up the designed syntheses with a significant economic impact in terms of overall process cost, working hours, energy consumption. The presented strategy, applied in this case to the production of food compounds can be expanded to a wide range of different substrates, completely changing the approach to synthetic procedures. Enzymatic cascade transformations which, up to now, have been reported in continuous only on analytical scale were intensified to a multi-gram scale. The innovative AROMAs-FLOW project with its efficient and eco-friendly production of natural aroma-compounds encompasses both the need for alternative “natural” routes for flavor production, and a sustainable way of working and living. In agreement to Europe 2020 strategy which aims at “smart, competitive and inclusive growth” for the development of European economy, my AROMAs-FLOW promoted green chemistry, lowering production costs, chemical waste, and improving working efficiency. The combination of flow chemistry reactors and biocatalysis has demonstrated to be a powerful economic and sustainable alternative to conventional batch synthetic reactions, with a strong impact both on environment and on society.
