Preparation of succinic acid using bipolar membrane electrodialysis

• The voltage drop follows the orders: UBP-A-C-BP > UBP-A-BP > UBP-C-BP.
• Concentration follows the orders: CBP-C-BP > CBP-A-C-BP > CBP-A-BP.
• Current efficiency follows the orders: ŋBP-A-C-BP > ŋBP-C-BP > ŋBP-A-BP.
• Energy consumption follows the orders: EBP-A-BP > EBP-A-C-BP > EBP-C-BP.
• It is wise to choose BP-A-C-BP configuration for preparation the succinic acid.

Succinic acid is a key compound in the food, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, with increasing demand in industry. To produce succinic acid in an environmental friendly manner, bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) was used to convert sodium succinate into succinic acid with 0.25 mol/L sodium sulfate as electrode supporting solution. Three stack configurations, such as BP-A-C-BP, BP-C-BP and BP-A-BP, were considered to find the most cost-effective configuration. These results suggested that succinic acid could be purified in a cost-effective manner by using BMED. The voltage drop, concentration, current efficiency, and energy consumption orders of three cell configurations for succinic acid production were UBP-A-C-BP > UBP-A-BP > UBP-C-BP, CBP-C-BP > CBP-A-C-BP > CBP-A-BP, ŋBP-A-C-BP > ŋBP-C-BP > ŋBP-A-BP and EBP-A-BP > EBP-A-C-BP > EBP-C-BP, respectively. The BP-A-C-BP configuration was found to have the high current efficiency (90%) and the low energy consumption (2.3 kW h/kg).