Removal of organic acid salts from simulated fermentation broth containing succinate by nanofiltration

In microbial cultures for the production of sodium succinate, often monovalent salts of sodium formate, sodium acetate and/or sodium lactate are produced as major by-products. In this study, nanofiltration (NF) was employed for the recovery of sodium succinate and the removal of by-products from simulated fermentation broth. In a series of preliminary experiments with synthetic single-salt solutions, five nanofiltration membranes were evaluated, and NF45 and ESNA1 membranes with a relatively low rejection to monovalent anions were selected for the subsequent experiments. The rejection of each salt at various fluxes was measured for single, binary, ternary and quaternary organic acid salts solutions containing succinate, formate, acetate, and/or lactate, simulating a real fermentation broth. Succinate rejection in multi-salt solutions was observed much higher than that in its single-salt solution, which was quite opposite to the cases of the monovalent acid salts involved. This could be well described by the facilitated transport of the monovalent anions due to Donnan effect in the presence of succinate, a divalent anion. Finally, nanofitration of a quaternary salts solution in a diafiltration mode was carried out for 36 h. With time, the rejection of succinate increased and the rejection of the by-products drastically decreased as the concentration ratio of succinate to by-products increased. From the extrapolation using a diafiltration model developed in this study, it was expected that almost complete removal of by-products was possible with no significant loss of succinate.