Separation & Purification of Fermented Products by Ion Chromatography

Chromatography

Alfa Chemistry provides a wide range of fermentation product separation and purification services. We have an extensive catalog of fermentation products to support the separation and purification of any product you need. Just determine the name of the separation product, we will select the appropriate resin for you, determine the elution conditions, and effectively design the entire purification process.

Introduction

Although ionic resins were synthesized earlier, they were only used in the recovery of biochemical and fermentation products in 1930. Ion exchange can be used to concentrate fermentation reaction products in a manner similar to purification. The difference between the two processes is that the concentration of the desired product in the feed solution of the concentration process is lower. Ion exchange chromatography uses an ion exchange resin as an adsorption or separation medium, which provides an ionic environment. Two or more solutes in the feed stream are allowed to be separated. The feed solution is added to a column packed with resin and eluted with solvent.

Application

Ion chromatography can be used to separate and purify lactic acid (LA) from the fermentation broth. LA is an important chemical widely used in the food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. LA can be produced by microbial fermentation, and then recovered and purified. Traditional recovery methods, such as direct and indirect distillation, precipitation and diffusion dialysis, are costly and unfriendly to the environment. It may be more straightforward and cheaper to recover LA through ion adsorption technology. The adsorption of LA by ion exchange resin is affected by many process parameters, such as pH value, contact time and initial concentration. Optically pure LA is essential for its conversion into high-quality polylactic acid. Therefore, column chromatography has attracted much attention because of its economic efficiency, easy operation, and strong selectivity. Recycling and purification by ion exchange resin can reduce the traditional downstream process time and achieve a higher final product yield. The advantages of this technology are lower raw material costs, shortest processing time and lower waste output. (Ahmad A, et al.,2021)

Table 1 Comparative study of LA recovery and purity through ions exchanger from the fermentation broth.

Ion chromatography can also be used to separate and purify various enzymes and antibiotics (such as potassium clavulanate, KCA) from the fermentation broth of strains.

As an expert in the field of ionic resins, Alfa Chemistry has always been aiming to provide the highest standards of service in the industry as its development goal. Thanks to an excellent team of experts, our fermentation product separation and purification services have been widely praised by customers. Our customers can directly contact our experts and provide timely feedback on any online inquiries. If you are interested in our services, please contact us.