Design and Sensitivity Analysis of Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography to Separate Sugar Alcohols

Abstract

As the advanced unit operation of batch chromatography, the simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography is widely used in sugar industries with the ion exchange resin as the stationary phase. The conventional SMB process is composed of 4 zones which have different roles. We considered the SMB process to separate two sugar alcohols, xylitol, and maltitol, which are commercially used as alternative sweeteners. To decide the optimum operating condition of the SMB process, we consider the migration velocities of solutes in each zone. The migration velocity of a solute is dependent on the adsorption isotherm and velocity ratio of the mobile phase and the simulated stationary phase velocities. The total concentration of a sugar alcohol mixture in a feed stream and length of the column (10 cm, 15 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm) were changed to find the optimum column length and operation sensitivities of the feed condition. The adsorption behaviors of two sugar alcohols were the linear isotherms. The isotherm parameters were determined by the single step frontal analysis. The robust operating condition and optimum column length were decided by considering the sensitivities of purity and yield of products.

Keywords:

• Simulated moving bed chromatography
• Xylitol
• Maltitol
• Design
• Sensitivity analysis

Acknowledgment

This study was supported by the ERC for Advanced Bioseparation Technology, KOSEF.