Recovery Processes of Organic Acids from Fermentation Broths in the Biomass-Based Industry

Abstract

The new movement towards green chemistry and renewable feedstocks makes microbial production of chemicals more competitive. Among the numerous chemicals, organic acids are more attractive targets for process development efforts in the renewable-based biorefinery industry. However, most of the production costs in microbial processes are higher than that in chemical processes, among which over 60% are generated by separation processes. Therefore, the research of separation and purification processes is important for a promising biorefinery industry. This review highlights the progress of recovery processes in the separation and purification of organic acids, including their advantages and disadvantages, current situation, and future prospects in terms of recovery yields and industrial application.

Bio-produced Acetic Acid: A Review

“…Therefore, there is a need to develop a process that should ideally be simple to carry out and allow the purification of acetic acid directly from the fermentation broths. Besides this, the emergence of new materials and the development of technologies would boost the recovery processes, which would make the biological process more competitive than the chemical routes and promote the development of green chemistry [62]. A major decrease in the capacity to synthesize industrial acetic acid from methanol and CO or by other chemical processes may occur at the end of the next century due to depletion of natural gas and petroleum resources together with an increasing demand for these materials worldwide.…”

“…Third, the calcium salt is treated with a high concentration of sulfuric acid to free the desired acid. Afterwards, the purified acid is obtained by further purification processes [62].…”

Reactive Extraction of Lactic Acid using Environmentally Benign Green Solvents and Synergistic Mixture of Extractants

“…The industrial and traditional technique of LA separation is precipitation, which uses calcium hydroxide and large amounts of sulfuric acid and further produces solid waste, i.e., calcium sulfate (environmentally unfriendly) as a by-product [8,9]. In order to reduce the cost, various extraction methods (such as adsorption [10], membrane separation [11,12], electrodialysis [13,14], ultra ltration [15], and extraction [16,17]) have e caciously been applied to the extraction of LA. All these methods possess several speci c disadvantages (such as poor extraction e ciency (%), being uneconomical, the generation of huge amount of wastewater, high complexity, high energy consumption, and large production of by-products) [13].…”

Organic phase screening for in‐stream reactive extraction of bio‐based 3‐hydroxypropionic acid: biocompatibility and extraction performances

“…[38][39][40][41][42] Solvents may affect cells at two different levels: by direct contact with the immiscible part of the solvent (phase-level toxicity) and interaction with the water-soluble solvent molecules (molecular-level toxicity). 40,43,44 The toxicity of several organic solvents commonly used for the reactive extraction of carboxylic acids has been assessed on different strains of microorganisms, 18,36,41,43,45 but the variable and often contradictory results suggest that the selection of a biocompatible extraction phase depends strongly on the microorganism strain used. Solvent selection according to the particular needs of an ISPR strategy is therefore a key issue.…”