MODELLING AND IDENTIFICATION FROM BATCH EXPERIMENTS OF A SMB PROCESS

The Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology is a continuous chromatographic process which is important in various fields, from sugar to enantiomer separation. In this paper, a systematic identification procedure for determining parameters of SMB models from batch experiments is validated with experimental SMB data. Parameters are first estimated from elution peaks. Then a cross-validation with SMB experiments is performed so as to assess whether the parameters identified from batch experiments may be used in a SMB model. This part of the work requires a careful modelling of the dead volumes within the SMB process.