Recovery of a Succinic, Formic, and Acetic Acid Mixture from a Model Fermentation Broth by Simulated Moving Bed Adsorption with Methanol as a Desorbent

This work aims to study the recovery of succinic acid, formic acid, and acetic acid from a model fermentation broth by adsorption using a commercial polyvinylpyridine (PVP) resin (Reillex 425), with methanol as the desorbent. A theoretical model has been developed to describe the adsorption/desorption dynamics of succinic acid/water, formic acid/water, and succinic acid/formic acid/acetic acid/glucose/methanol/water mixtures in a fixed bed of commercial resin. The model has been used to design and optimize a simulated moving bed process to recover acids from a model fermentation broth using the triangle theory and volume separation method. It is possible to recover 95% of the acids, with 99.9% purity, with a productivity of 24.737 kg msolid –3 h–1 and a desorbent consumption of 0.0901 m3 kg–1. The acids are obtained free of water-soluble impurities and water, mixed with methanol, and can be subsequently separated or used directly in esterification processes with methanol.