Performance characterization of nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange technologies for acetic acid separation

[Display omitted] •Five anion-exchange resins and five pressure-driven membranes were tested to recover acetic acid in aqueous solution.•Resin adsorption phenomena were evaluated with isotherm and kinetic models.•IRN-78 was determined to be the best-performing resin for acetic acid separation when solution pH was greater than pKa of acetic acid.•Solution diffusion model was successfully used to fit the experimental data for membrane separation.•Reverse osmosis membrane (BW30XFR) achieved the highest acetic acid rejection (98.6%). A major obstacle to widespread implementation of bio-based fuels and chemicals is the lack of efficient and cost-effective separation methods. To purify acetic acid produced by biochemical conversion of biomass via anaerobic digestion, this work employs two commonly used separation technologies: (1) ion-exchange (IX) resin and (2) pressure-driven membranes. This study tested five commercially available strong- and weak-base anion-exchange resins and five commercially available nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The pH of the feed solution significantly affected adsorption capacity. At pH 6.3, a strong-base IX resin (IRN-78) performed best (95.1% acetate removal). With strong-base IX resins, the Langmuir isotherm model fit well, whereas for weak-base IX resins, the Freundlich isotherm provided a better fit. A pseudo-second-order kinetic model fit well for both IRN-78 and IRA-67. Regarding membrane separation, RO (BW30XFR membrane) achieved the highest rejection (98.6% acetate rejection), whereas an NF membrane (NF*) achieved the best combination of permeate flux (105 L/(h·m2)) and rejection (83.1% acetate rejection). For membrane performance, the experimental data were fit using the solution diffusion model. Increased pH in the feed solution lowered permeate flux but increased acetic acid rejection. When the acetic acid concentration in the feed solution increased, both permeate flux and acetic acid rejection decreased for membrane NF*.