(341b) Process Synthesis for Improved Bioseparations Using Multi-Resin Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography 

Simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography uses the principle of counter-current extraction in a set of chromatography columns by applying a counter-current flow of a solid phase and a mobile gas/liquid phase. SMB chromatography leads to an increase in productivity and lower eluent consumption over batch chromatography by using a four zone system divided by four steams: 1) the feed mixture, 2) the purified fast component, 3) the purified slow component, and 4) the incoming eluent.¹ To further improve the productivity, researchers have looked at optimizing the amount of columns in each zone and the time each stream switches, but have not considered using multiple types of resins in each zone simultaneously to increase the separation efficiency for bioprocess applications.

In this work, we optimize the profitability of the SMB chromatography by considering the process design and the resin material selection by improving upon an MINLP model developed by Hasan and Floudas.² We apply this improved model to the case study of the industrially-relevant fructose-glucose separation and beta-carotene extracted from Saccharomyces cerevisiae to improve the productivity and profitability. Separation parameters are determined experimentally for each resin and used in the modified MINLP model. The multi-resin SMB chromatography will be compared to the single-resin to SMB chromatography process to show the increase profitability.

1. S. V. Vignesh, K. Hariprasad, P. Athawale, and S. Bhartiya, “An optimization-driven novel operation of simulated moving bed chromatographic separation,” IFAC-PapersOnLine, vol. 49, no. 7, pp. 165–170, Jan. 2016.
2. M. M. Faruque Hasan, E. L. First, and C. A. Floudas, “Discovery of novel zeolites and multi-zeolite processes for p-xylene separation using simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography,” Chemical Engineering Science, vol. 159, pp. 3–17, Feb. 2017.