Integrated Ion-Exchange Membrane Resin Wafer Assemblies for Aromatic Organic Acid Separations Using Electrodeionization

Aromatic acids, such as p-coumaric acid, are valuable chemical intermediates that are used in the specialty chemical industries because they are precursors to phenylpropanoid compounds. The separation of p-coumaric acid from fermentation broths is a critical step in the biochemical production proces...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS sustainable chemistry & engineering 2023-01, Vol.11 (3), p.945-956
Main Authors: Jordan, Matthew L., Kokoszka, Grzegorz, Gallage Dona, Hishara Keshani, Senadheera, Dodangodage Ishara, Kumar, Revati, Lin, Yupo J., Arges, Christopher G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
anions
electrodeionization
ENGINEERING
ion-exchange membranes
ionomers
membranes
Organic acid
organic acids
organic polymers
p-coumaric acid
Separation
separations
umbrella sampling
weighted histogram analysis
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Summary:Aromatic acids, such as p-coumaric acid, are valuable chemical intermediates that are used in the specialty chemical industries because they are precursors to phenylpropanoid compounds. The separation of p-coumaric acid from fermentation broths is a critical step in the biochemical production process and more broadly the circular carbon economy. Electrodeionization (EDI) has been applied toward separations of low-carbon chain acids, but purifying p-coumaric acid has been challenging due to fouling and irreversible binding with ion-exchange membranes and resins. Here, we report a new membrane wafer assembly (MWA) consisting of laminated ion exchange membranes to porous ionomer-binder resin wafers for EDI. The MWAs in an EDI stack showed a 7-fold increase in p-coumaric acid capture while also using 70% less specific energy consumption when benchmarked against state-of-the-art resin wafer EDI modules. The more efficient p-coumaric acid recovery was ascribed to (i) the 38% reduction in interfacial transport resistance between the membrane and resin wafer and (ii) using imidazolium anion exchange membranes and ionomer binders in the MWA. MD simulations revealed enhanced transport rates for p-coumarate in imidazolium ionomers through π–π interactions. Adopting the new MWA significantly reduced the amount of ion-exchange membranes in EDI and may lead to drastic capital cost savings.
ISSN:2168-0485
2168-0485
DOI:10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c05255