Development of vegetable oil-based emulsion liquid membrane for downstream processing of bio-succinic acid

Abstract

Succinic acid has been recognized as a useful platform chemical that can be applied in various industries. The application of bio-based succinic acid is still limited due to high downstream processing cost. In this study, vegetable oil-based emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) process is proposed to recover succinic acid from fermentation broth. The ELM system consists of three main liquid phases; external feed, membrane, and internal stripping. The liquid membrane phase was prepared by dissolving Amberlite LA2 and Span 80 in palm oil, while, the internal phase comprises of sodium carbonate solution, Na2CO3. The influence of feed, stripping agent and carrier concentration, treat ratio, as well as liquid membrane recycling on ELM performance were studied. The results showed 10 g/L of initial concentration, 1.0 M of Na2CO3, 0.7 M of Amberlite LA2, and treat ratio of 1:5 is the best condition with almost 100% recovery and enrichment of 21 times. The recycled liquid membrane concentrates the succinic acid up to 12 times. Therefore, the proposed ELM is a potential technology to extract bio-succinic acid.