Separation of methionine from the mixture with sodium carbonate using bipolar membrane electrodialysis

• BMED was firstly used for methionine production.
• Effect of membranes on methionine production was investigated.
• Effect of cell configuration on methionine production was investigated.
• Pilot-scale BMED setup as enlargement was used for methionine production.

Methionine is an important amino acid can be only obtained through ingestion of particular foods. The so called hydration method is the common route for methionine preparation, which often involves many disadvantages such as environmental pollution and low methionine recovery. To avoid these problems, bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) was introduced as alternative. The feasibility of BMED for methionine separation from its mixture with sodium carbonate was investigated using a series of mono-polar membranes and bipolar membranes (BM) with different cell-configurations. Membrane fouling was investigated using SEM and ATR-FTIR methods. The final results indicate that ChemJOY membranes are suitable for methionine separation with excellent anti-fouling characters. The BM-cation exchange membrane (C) is the most suitable cell-configuration. Following the success of lab-scale experiments, a pilot-scale setup was built and the results indicated that BMED could produce methionine efficiently at recovery ratio of ca. 83.23% and desalination ratio of ca. 95.18%.