Kinetic Studies on Biobutanol Recovery Process Using Adsorbent Resin

Adsorption of 1-butanol using adsorbent resin is considered as an energy-efficient method to recover 1-butanol from an acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation broth. To develop the adsorption process, kinetic studies were carried out on adsorption of fermentation products using poly-(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) adsorbent resin. The kinetics for the adsorption of each component were represented in the form of the Langmuir equation and the kinetic parameters were then estimated based on the experimental data. For the parameter estimation of the adsorption model, experiments have been carried out with a batch type slurry adsorption equipment and fermentation model broth, containing acetone, ethanol, 1-butanol, acetic acid, and butyric acid. It was found that the extended Langmuir model derived from single component adsorption can correctly predict the competitive adsorption of multi-component mixture. The developed kinetic models are validated by the experiment using the actual broth. This study is expected to contribute to designing a large-scale biobutanol recovery process.