Green Biorefinery - Development of key separation technologies to extract lactic acid and other valuable substances from silage juice

Status

completed

Summary

The first step is to separate all substances with a molecular weight higher than approximately 250 Dalton from the feed stream using nanofiltration. For this purpose around 6 different types of nanofiltration membranes will be tested on laboratory scale. Pilot tests will follow using the most promising membranes based on these membrane screening investigations.

In the second part of the project the separation between the two product groups (lactic acid and amino acids) will be investigated. In preliminary evaluations it was found that it should be possible to separate lactate and inorganic salts from amino acids by electrodialysis. It is planed to follow this promising strategy. However, it is difficult to isolate pure substances by the above mentioned techniques. Thus, additional separation strategies such as chromatography in combination with membrane technology have to be developed in order to meet the required technological, economical as well as ecological targets.

In the end a complete production chain consisting of pre-treatment, main separation and finishing steps will be discussed and partially realized.

Prof. Dr. Novalin Senad, Mag. Koschuh Werner
Muthgasse 18
A-1190 Wien
Tel.: +43 (1) 36006-6288
Fax: +43 (1) 36006-6251
E-Mail: Senad.Novalin@boku.ac.at