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Crud formation during reactive extraction hinders phase separation and makes the application of conventional extraction equipment more challenging. This study investigates the influence of amines a...

Fermentation of residues or side streams can be used to produce valuable products, such as carboxylic acids. Reactive solvent extraction is widely studied as isolation method for lactic acid from fermentation broths. Here, we investigate the reactive extraction of lactic acid from sweet sorghum silage press juice using different extractants, modifiers, and diluents. Besides a high extraction efficiency, a low crud formation with this highly complex raw material is targeted. Depending on the solvent phase composition, an extraction efficiency of up to 41.1 % was reached using DOA/ALIQ:1–octanol:n–nonane. The crud layer was highly influenced by the applied diluent and amounted to 2.6–42.3 vol% of the total mixture volume. The back-extraction experiments showed, that up to 98.2 % of lactic acid were recovered. Summarizing, the results show that reactive solvent extraction of lactic acid is applicable to highly complex process streams, and crud formation can be reduced by adjusting the solvent phase composition.

The paper presents an experimental study on the preparation and characterization of cellulose films and their use for reactive lignosulfonate extraction. The extraction of lignosulfonates leads to emulsion and crud formation when standard equipment is applied. By using cellulose films as a support layer between the aqueous feed phase and the organic extractant phase, emulsion formation is prevented. The results showed that selective separation and a fractionation of the lignosulfonates can be realized with this novel approach simultaneously.