weight. However, this can only be stated with a profound study of the phase equilibrium and mass transfer specificities.
On the other hand, the lack of statistical significance for the enzyme content, on the molecular weight might be related to the water content of enzyme. At first sight, the increase in the enzyme content should enhance the polymerization rate, leading to higher molecular weights. However, increasing the enzyme con- tent also raises the water content of the system. Despite acting as the initiator of the reaction, the presence of water enables the hydrolysis of polycaprolactone ester bonds. Unlike the fact that CO2 is hydrophilic, the LPG is hydrophobic, leaving the water to react with the formed polycaprolactone chain and therefore, functioning on its cleavage. In this case, the raise in the polymerization reaction rates might be compensated by the enhancement of the polymeric chains cleavage resulting in a lack of statistical relevance to the increase of catalyst content.
Regarding the effect of pressure over the parameters evaluated, the statistical analysis indicated that pressure was not a significant variable, within the range of the variables studied, on the param- eters evaluated (reaction yield, Mn, Mw and PI), a behavior similar to the results obtained and discussed by Rosso et al. [13].
The evaluation of the results for the different experimental con- ditions tested (data presented in Table 1) helped with the selection of the parameter levels for the kinetic polymerization assays of