ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Low-waste fermentation-derived organic acid production by bipolar membrane electrodialysis—an overview

Éva Hülber-Beyer, Katalin Bélafi-Bakó, and Nándor Nemestóthy

Research Group On Bioengineering, Membrane Technology and Energetics, University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary

E-mail: beyer.eva@mk.uni-pannon.hu

Received: 10 February 2021  Accepted: 24 May 2021

Abstract:

Organic acids, e.g, citric acid, fumaric acid, lactic acid, malic acid, pyruvic acid and succinic acid, have important role in the food industry and are potential raw materials for the sustainable chemical industry. Their fermentative production based on renewable raw materials requires innovatively designed downstream processing to maintain low environmental impact and resource efficiency throughout the production process. The application of bipolar membranes offers clean and effective way to generate hydrogen ions required for free acid production from its salt. The water dissociation reaction inside the bipolar membrane triggered by electric field plays key role in providing hydrogen ion for the replacement of the cations in organic acid salts. Combined with monopolar ion-exchange membranes in a bipolar membrane electrodialysis process, material flow can be separated beside the product stream into additional reusable streams, thus minimizing the waste generation. This paper focuses on bipolar membrane electrodialysis applied for organic acid recovery from fermentation broth.

Keywords: Alkali recycling; Downstream process; Electromembrane process; Organic acid recovery

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-021-01720-w

Chemical Papers 75 (10) 5223–5234 (2021)