Estudio de la separación de ácido valérico y [alfa]-feniglicina de disoluciones acuosas por extracción reactiva con extractante libre y soportado

Abstract

The separation of carboxylic acids and amino acids, as they are biocompounds of food and pharmaceutical interest, was carried out with a new extraction technology using extractant-impregnated resins. Biocompounds are extensively used as raw materials in the chemical, pharmaceutical, food and health industries. It is important to recover them from fermentation broths or process effluents for economic and environment reasons in order to minimize water pollution. ?-Phenylglycine is an important precursor in the pharmaceutical industry in the production of ?-lactam antibiotics. Valeric acid can be found as a by-product in the manufacture of adipic acid. As pure adipic acid is required when it is to be used as the monomer in polymerization process, any valeric acid produced must be removed during the adipic acid purification step. Extraction with impregnated resins (EIR) is a novel hybrid technology which combines the high capacity and selectivity of liquid-liquid extraction technique, with the advantages of separation processes with ion exchange resins, which allow to process high quantities of diluted solutions, using simple and low cost equipments, such as fixed or fluidized beds. This study demonstrates that this new technology is an alternative to the conventional separation processes.