Ionic liquid‐based in situ product removal design exemplified for an acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation

Abstract

Selecting an appropriate separation technique is essential for the application of in situ product removal (ISPR) technology in biological processes. In this work, a three‐stage systematic design method is proposed as a guide to integrate ionic liquid (IL)‐based separation techniques into ISPR. This design method combines the selection of a suitable ISPR processing scheme, the optimal design of an IL‐based liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) system followed by process simulation and evaluation. As a proof of concept, results for a conventional acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation are presented (40,000 ton/year butanol production). In this application, ILs tetradecyl(trihexyl)phosphonium tetracyanoborate ([TDPh][TCB]) and tetraoctylammonium 2‐methyl‐1‐naphthoate ([TOA] [MNaph]) are identified as the optimal solvents from computer‐aided IL design (CAILD) method and reported experimental data, respectively. The dynamic simulation results for the fermentation process show that, the productivity of IL‐based in situ (fed‐batch) process and in situ (batch) process is around 2.7 and 1.8fold that of base case. Additionally, the IL‐based in situ (fed‐batch) process and in situ (batch) process also have significant energy savings (79.6% and 77.6%) when compared to the base case.

Structure optimization of task-specific ionic liquids targeting low-carbon-emission ethylbenzene production

“…Net CO 2 emission = Direct emission + Indirect emission -Captured CO 2 (14) In this study, no part of the process products contains CO 2 , so direct…”

“…As reported, the computer-aided ionic liquid design (CAILD) method has been efficiently employed to screen high-performance ILs for different purposes, including gas separation [12,13], bioproduct recovery [14,15], separation of near azeotropic system, and azeotropic mixtures [16][17][18][19], etc. The quality of the solutions from CAILD-based design problems mainly depends on the reliability of the used property models and optimization algorithms.…”

“…The quality of the solutions from CAILD-based design problems mainly depends on the reliability of the used property models and optimization algorithms. By far, thermodynamic models such as UNIFAC [12][13][14][15]19,20], NRTL [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]、COSMO-RS [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], and UNIQUAC [25,28] have been employed to study the thermodynamic behavior of IL-organic chemical systems. Among these studied thermodynamic models, UNIFAC being a group contribution (GC)-based model, is the most widely applied one in CAILD.…”

Advances in in situ and in-line liquid–liquid extraction for bioprocess intensification

“…Through simulations, tetradecyl(trihexyl)phosphonium tetracyanoborate and tetraoctylammonium 2-methyl-1-naphthoate have been shown to be promising candidates for the butanol extraction. 46 Aqueous two-phase extractions (ATPE) have been reported for their use in the extractive fermentation. For example, the ATPE consisting of PEG, dextran, and phosphate salts was able to enhance the production yield of the exopolysaccharide pullulan from A. pullulans .…”

“…Due to their non-volatile and environmentally friendly nature, ILs are used in different applications. Examples of bioprocesses include the LLE of butanol, 24,25 ethanol, 26 and fatty acids. 27 Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are made of two or more constituents, which form a mixture that has a lower melting point than the individual constituents (i.e., a eutectic mixture).…”