(288c) Potential Roles of a Simulate-Moving-Bed Chromatography As a Final-Step Purification Process for the Production of High-Valued Products from Marine Algae Biomasses

There have been a continued interest in utilizing land or marine biomass for the production of biofuel ingredients or high-valued chemical feedstock components. Between the two biomasses with different sources, the use of marine biomass has recently been gaining more attention because land biomass could compete with agricultural crops for land or fresh water, and also have an undesirable effect on environmental protection due to the excessive exploitation of wood resources. To maximize the industrial applicability and usefulness of marine biomass, it is essential to establish highly efficient downstream processes for recovering target components with high purities from the marine-biomass hydrolysate. The most important step in such downstream processes is a final-stage purification step, which is more true particularly if the usage of marine biomass is oriented toward the production of high-valued pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, human milks, and prebiotics. In this presentation, it will be shown that a simulated-moving-bed (SMB) chromatography will be highly suitable as a final-stage purification process for facilitating the industrial utilization of marine biomass. This will be exemplified by the recent research results about the production of fucose and other high-valued products from microalgae and macroalgaes, whose industrial applications have been in progress or under consideration.