Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Simulating moving bed chromatography separation of galacto-oligosaccharides

Łukasz Wiśniewski, Monika Antošová, Milan Polakovič *

Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinského 9, 812 37 Bratislava, Slovakia

E-mail: * milan.polakovic@stuba.sk

Abstract: A mixture of galacto-oligosaccharides and non-prebiotic sugars was separated using a simulated moving bed unit equipped with eight packed-bed columns of a cation exchanger. In order to determine operating conditions using triangle theory, equilibrium adsorption isotherms of galactose, glucose, lactose, tri- and tetragalacto-oligosaccharide were measured. It was found that each column of the SMB unit had a maximum separation efficiency of more than 3000 theoretical plates. The achieved purity of galacto-oligosaccharides in the raffinate stream was 99.9 %, similarly 99.9 % of extract was formed by non-prebiotic sugars lactose, glucose and galactose. The productivities in the raffinate and extract, were 0.g/(L h) and 2.g/(L h), respectively.

Keywords: simulated moving bed chromatography, galacto-oligosaccharides, adsorption isotherm

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0168.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2013, pp. 206—210, DOI: 10.2478/acs-2013-0033