Green reclaiming of riboflavin from crystallization mother liquor by macroporous resin and electrodialysis

Abstract

Riboflavin crystallization mother liquor contains a prominent amount of riboflavin which discharged through as a waste material. As a waste, it causes serious environmental pollution. Hence, with the source of environment pollution, it also causes wastage of rich riboflavin resources. The main object of this study is to control environmental pollution by the process of crystallization mother liquor and recovered the purified riboflavin from the waste material. For that purpose, different macroporous resins with different adsorption and desorption properties (HP20, SP207, AB-8, and D290) were firstly investigated. It revealed that SP 207 possessed good separation results as compared to other ones. To optimize the separation process, different adsorption and desorption experiments were carried out on a column packed with SP 207 resin. The Freundlich isotherm model was applied which shows that equilibrium obtained at 20 °C. However, with the resin SP 207, the optimum flow rates were observed at these conditions, adsorption 5 BV/h, desorption flow rate 20 BV/h with 6 BV and eluent used (20:80, v/v) hydrochloric acid–ethanol. The hydrochloric acid and ethanol in desorption solution were recovered 80% and 75%, respectively, by electrodialysis and distillation. However, in the final product, the purity of riboflavin was obtained 96.84 ± 0.21% with the recovery of 80.66 ± 0.39%. These findings revealed that highly purified riboflavin product can be achieved from the crystallization mother liquor by macroporous resins and by electrodialysis process. The reported method proved experimentally with successful results and observed as a low-cost process and environment-friendly.