The ongoing effort to decarbonize the chemical industry requires many approaches, including the use of biomass and biological processes to reduce the carbon intensity of chemical products. Separation of desirable products from fermentation broth is a major challenge in this space.
A few years ago, RAPID led a successful proposal to improve the availability and quality of physical property data and thermodynamic models for aqueous mixtures of organic acids, commonly encountered in fermentation processes. These new modeling capabilities are key for continued development of new separation techniques for the purification of organic acids and other key bio-compounds. In this effort, RAPID is partnering with its members Argonne National Laboratories (ANL), Texas Tech Univ. (TTU), and Siemens with funding from the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) supporting the work of the existing Bioprocessing Separation Consortium.
Accurate thermodynamic modeling enables accurate predictive process simulation models, which facilitate the selection of appropriate materials and separation technologies for development and scale-up. This is critically important when designing and optimizing chemical processes, especially for complex mixtures like those produced via fermentation and other biological processes.
Three separation technologies are included in...
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