Aromatic
acids, such as p-coumaric acid, are valuable
chemical
intermediates that are used in the specialty chemical industries because
they are precursors to phenylpropanoid compounds. The separation of
p-coumaric acid from fermentation broths is a critical step in the
biochemical production process and more broadly the circular carbon
economy. Electrodeionization (EDI) has been applied toward separations
of low-carbon chain acids, but purifying p-coumaric acid has been
challenging due to fouling and irreversible binding with ion-exchange
membranes and resins. Here, we report a new membrane wafer assembly
(MWA) consisting of laminated ion exchange membranes to porous ionomer-binder
resin wafers for EDI. The MWAs in an EDI stack showed a 7-fold increase
in p-coumaric acid capture while also using 70% less specific energy
consumption when benchmarked against state-of-the-art resin wafer
EDI modules. The more efficient p-coumaric acid recovery was ascribed
to (i) the 38% reduction in interfacial transport resistance between
the membrane and resin wafer and (ii) using imidazolium anion exchange
membranes and ionomer binders in the MWA. MD simulations revealed
enhanced transport rates for p-coumarate in imidazolium ionomers through
π–π interactions. Adopting the new MWA significantly
reduced the amount of ion-exchange membranes in EDI and may lead to
drastic capital cost savings.
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