Ion Chromatography

Process Description | Case Studies

Applications of chromatography

In several industries like sugar/starch industries, chemical or pharmaceutical industries, chromatography processes have been commonly operated for decades for various applications such as demineralization / deashing, separation and purification / enrichment of valuable products.

Industrially, Ion Exclusion Chromatography technology is used for the above applications, based on following physical principle: ion exchange resins beds, installed in pressurized columns, act as a charged solid separation medium. The components of the processed fluid have different electrical affinities to this medium and are, as a result, differently retained by the resins thanks to these different affinities. Therefore, by elution, these components can be recovered separately at the outlet of the resins bed.

Based on this principle, Ion Exclusion Chromatography offers for instance a proven economical alternative to the use of conventional ion exchange resins systems for the separation of sugars from non-sugars (sugars deashing /demineralization). For such applications, several of the many advantages of chromatography can be mentioned:

• A reduction of the effluent volume and of the pollution load;

• The avoidance of chemical regenerants;

• A significant decrease of energy consumption.

In addition to achieve separation / purification and enrichment, Ion Exclusion Chromatography can be used to separate sugars between themselves as well as to separate other organic molecules.

EURODIA / AMERIDIA has a large experience of designing and manufacturing more than 15 turn key chromatography plants worldwide, operated for the demineralization, separation and purification / enrichment of specialty sugars or oligosaccharides (fructose / glucose / maltose, etc..), of polyols, and of organic acids, etc…

EURODIA / AMERIDIA Chromatography Technology (ISMB^® / NMCI^®)

Historically, many industrial Ion Exclusion Chromatography systems are based on the “Simulated Moving Bed” (SMB) technology, using many columns (typically 8 to 12) to reach required separation performances.

Using an innovative and enhanced concept, the chromatographic systems supplied by EURODIA / AMERIDIA are based on patented technologies: the “Improved Simulated Moving Bed” (ISMB^®) process for two components separation and the NMCI^® process for the separation of more than two fractions. Both the ISMB and NMCI processes have been licensed from Nippon Rensui Co., a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (Tokyo, Japan)

To learn more about the principle of ISMB process, please click here (downloading a flash file). test

Our chromatography technology brings numerous benefits, among which:

       For the same separation performances, ISMB^® systems operate only 4 separation chambers, installed in one single column, thus reducing drastically the investment cost compared to SMB systems (see hereafter figure).

·        Low elution water consumption:

       15 to 30% lower than all other technologies on the market, for the same level of performance. In addition to the direct positive impact on the running cost of chromatography themself, this allows a great reduction of the size of the downstream evaporation steps that are traditionally operated to re-concentrate the recovered fractions.

·        Proprietary Distributors and Collectors:

       Our systems include proprietary Distributors and Collectors (D&C), designed and manufactured for each given separation. These D&C allow a perfect piston flow distribution within the resins beds, which is a key point to reach high separation performances.

·        Specific chromatographic resins:

       The DIAION^® resins, produced by Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. that are used in our chromatography plants, have a small bead size (220 µm) with a uniformity coefficient, available with a large range of DVB content (crosslinkage) between 4 and 8%. These chromatographic resins are unique on the market with these characteristics and, in combination with the ISMB^® / NMCI^® technology, allow to reach high performance.

·        Easy automation:

       Thanks to its sequential principle (contrarily to SMB which is a pure continuous process), the automation of our ISMB^® system is much easier and allows to fully control and easily manage our units for industrial production.

·        A proprietary simulation program

       This mathematical simulation tools allows a rapid prediction of the expected separation performance and of the costs of industrial plant based on simple pulse test data. This greatly reduces the testing requirements for a new application. 

This chart illustrates the comparison between both ISMB^® and SMB processes, operated for the purification of Fructose. It can be noticed that the same performance obtained with ISMB^® using four beds are the same as with SMB operating 12 beds. The investment costs are consequently reduced.

ISMB performance – Case studies from industrial plants

Fructose demineralization / deashing

The first ISMB^® unit in Europe has been operating for more than six years to separate sugar (Fructose) from non-sugars under very attractive economical conditions. Starting with a syrup at 60 Bx and with a purity of 85 % as Fructose, this unit is designed to:

• Reach a fructose purity of 96% minimum;
• Reach a fructose recovery of 98,5% minimum;
• Continuously process a feed flow that can vary between 80 and 110 % of its nominal value;
• Obtain a minimum sugar purity of 96 % with a recovery rate higher than 98.5 %;
• Limit the energy consumption to less than 1.7 kWh/m3;
• Minimize the water consumption: above performances are reached with a W/F (ratio between volumetric flow rates of elution water and raw material) of only 3.

Fructose / Glucose separation

The following tables illustrate the mass balance for the separation Fructose / Glucose based on the real performance of several commercial plants

Table 1: separation results (F80 – Rec95)

With a very low W/F of 1.079, it is possible to achieve a Fructose purity of 80% with a recovery of 95%

Table 2: separation results (F85 – Rec95)

FEED: HFCS                                                    RESIN; UBK-555  

Feed: 183.6 (ton/D)                                          W/F: 1.170 (v/v)
P-Fra: 88.9 (ton/D)
R-Fra: 94.9 (ton/D)

	FEED		WATER	P-Fra		R-Fra		REC.
	(ton/D)	(%)	(ton/D)	(ton/D)	(%)	(ton/D)	(%)	(%)
Olig.	11.02	6.0		1.87	2.1	9.12	9.6	17.0
Glu.	93.65	51.0		11.07	12.5	81.87	86.3	11.9
Fru.	78.96	43.0		75.92	85.4	3.92	4.1	95.1
DS-TOTAL	183.64	100.0		88.86	100.0	94.91	100.0	48.4
WATER	122.42			141.59		262.83
TOTAL	306.06		280.13	230.45		357.74
CONC (wt%)		60.0			38.6		26.5
Flow (m3/h)	10.17		11.90		8.39		13.68
DENS (t/m3)	1.254		0.981		1.145		1.089

With a slightly higher W/F of 1.17, the purity can be increased to 85%, and it can reach 90% with a W/F of 1.289. These W/F ratios are significantly lower than for typical SMB systems.

Table 3: separation results (F90 – Rec95)

FEED: HFCS                                                    RESIN; UBK-555
 
Feed: 167.1 (ton/D)                                          W/F: 1.289 (v/v)
P-Fra: 75.2 (ton/D)
R-Fra: 90.9 (ton/D)

	FEED		WATER	P-Fra		R-Fra		REC.
	(ton/D)	(%)	(ton/D)	(ton/D)	(%)	(ton/D)	(%)	(%)
Olig.	10.03	6.0		1.47	2.0	8.53	9.4	14.7
Glu.	85.24	51.0		5.85	7.8	78.78	86.7	6.9
Fru.	71.87	43.0		67.91	90.3	3.61	4.0	95.0
DS-TOTAL	167.13	100.0		75.23	100.0	90.91	100.0	45.3
WATER	111.42			126.35		268.43
TOTAL	278.55		280.88	201.57		359.34
CONC (wt%)		60.0			37.3		25.3
Flow (m3/h)	9.26		11.93		7.37		13.82
DENS (t/m3)	1.254		0.981		1.139		1.084

The following table sum up those performance:

Process Description | Case Studies

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