Large-scale separation of amino acids by continuous displacement chromatography

Abstract

Continuous annular chromatography (CAC) is a developing technology that allows truly continuous chromatographic separations. Previous work has demonstrated the utility of this technology for the separation of various materials by isocratic elution on a bench scale. Novel applications and improved operation of the process were studied in this work, demonstrating that CAC is a versatile apparatus which is capable of separations at high throughput. Three specific separation systems were investigated. Pilot-scale separations at high loadings were performed using an industrial sugar mixture as an example of scale-up for isocratic separations. Bench-scale experiments of a low concentration metal ion mixture were performed to demonstrate stepwise elution, a chromatographic technique which decreases dilution and increases sorbent capacity. Finally, the separation of mixtures of amino acids by ion exchange was investigated to demonstrate the use of displacement development on the CAC. This technique, which perhaps has the most potential, when applied to the CAC allowed simultaneous separation and concentration of multicomponent mixtures on a continuous basis. Mathematical models were developed to describe the CAC performance and optimize the operating conditions. For all the systems investigated, the continuous separation performance of the CAC was found to be very nearly the same as the batchwise performance of conventional chromatography. The technology appears, thus, to be very promising for industrial applications.