Oleochemicals and biodiesel (OC/BD) are biodegradable chemicals that are derived from fats and oils (Abdelmoez and Mustafa, 2014; Hasan et al., 2023; Sreeharsha et al., 2023; Su et al., 2022), that are considered as carbon neutral alternatives to many petrochemicals. They are produced by well-established chemical technologies that have been commercialized worldwide (Abdelmoez et al., 2013; Bashir et al., 2022; Khan et al., 2022). However, such methods consume a considerable amount of energy and pose a threat to the environment for the use of hazardous chemical catalysts. In addition, they produce many untargeted byproducts due to the lack of reaction selectivity (Hosney and Mustafa, 2020). Recently, commercial utilization of enzymes technology has grabbed much attention due to its cleaner and sustainable nature. Enzyme technology offers many advantages when they are used as biocatalyst replacing the chemical catalysts such as lowering the reaction temperature, and producing clean products without side reactions (Mustafa et al., 2016). In addition, the investment in the plant-based enzyme technology is much cheaper than that of using chemical technologies because of the lower processes steps required for the enzymatic process (Hosney et al., 2020a). Fig. 1 shows a comparison between enzymatic- and chemical-catalyzed processes in terms of number of processes steps and temperatures used for producing glycerin esters (Mustafa et al., 2016).

However, the use of enzymatic method in commercial production is constrained by high costs of enzymes. (Hosney et al., 2020b). In the last ten years, significant advancements in laboratory, pilot, and industrial settings have been made to lower the price of enzyme synthesis and utilization. The enzymatic process is now economically competitive as compared to the conventional method due to the significant reduction in production costs that have occurred under specified configurations and conditions (Aprile et al., 2023; Mustafa, 2021; Zhong et al., 2019).

This review reports the advances achieved in enzymatic OC/BD commercialization and related research, including: i) the reduction of enzyme production cost, ii) the optimization of enzyme performance in a given process, iii) the use of low-quality raw materials and iv) the evaluation of different reactor designs. It highlights current advancements in lipase research and development as one of the key elements in creating a method that is cost-competitive for OC/BD. It also offers an update on the present difficulties and chances for OC/BD commercialization from a techno-economic standpoint. Additionally, relevant enzymatic OC/BD producers, markets, difficulties, and commercialization potential are critically explored. Environmental factors are also taken into account. It is worth noting that most previous reviews reported only the enzymatic advances of OC/BD based on a lab scale without discussing the recently successful implemented large-scale enzymatic plants, globally. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first review that reports the progress regarding the currently available large-scale enzymatic-based plants for OC/BD production. Such discussion bridges the gap between the lab and commercial scales and provides a benchmark regarding how challenges associated with enzymatic process implementation can be converted into opportunities.