Simulated Moving-Bed Reactor: Application in Bioreaction and Separation

Abstract

The performance of simulated moving-bed reactor for two semicontinuous chromatographic reaction-separation processes, namely, isomerization of glucose to fructose (Hashimoto et al., 1993) and inversion of sucrose to glucose and fructose (Ganetsos et al., 1993), has been studied by mathematical modeling and numerical simulations. Simulation results agreed well with the published experimental results. The process performance, which is stated in terms of the process performance parameters defined in this paper, was also studied for various operating conditions, for both the processes. Since the reaction was introduced in the process, reaction conversion becomes a process performance parameter of importance, which was considered along with product purity and recovery. The criteria of the operating parameter (Ruthven and Ching, 1989) for linear systems for a simulated moving-bed process is not applicable for a simulated moving-bed reactor process in some cases.