The energy-saving production of tartaric acid using ion exchange resin-filling bipolar membrane electrodialysis

In view of some inherent disadvantages of traditional technique, production of tartaric acid was attempted through the laboratory-scale bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) in this work. Due to the relatively low solubility of bitartrate, the three-compartment configuration but not the two-compartment configuration which is preferred for weak acid production was selected. Thus, one of the aims of this work lies in the exploration of the energy-saving producing method for weak acid by BMED with the three-compartment configuration. Enlightened by electro-deionization technology, strong acid resin was filled in the acid compartment which is partly responsible for high energy consumption in the weak acid production to facilitate the transport of ions. Accordingly, the cell voltage, current efficiency and energy consumption were investigated and compared during the tartaric acid production before and after the addition of resin, respectively. The preliminary results showed that the expectation that the run of BMED with three-compartment configuration at relatively high current density with relatively low energy consumption can be implemented to a certain extent by the aforementioned method.