8-zone Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography for the separation of ternary mixtures

Simulated Moving Bed Chromatography is a well-established separation method. Its conventional system has proved its utility for the separation of binary mixtures. Since in industry one of the main challenges is to separate complex mixtures, several studies were conducted and novel structures have been proposed to address this problem, including the 8-zone Simulated Moving Bed. This works’ aim is to experimentally demonstrate the isolation of an intermediary eluting molecule out of a pseudo ternary mixture using 8-zone SMB. This was performed through adsorption isotherm characterization, using multicomponent single column experiments, and subsequent model and design of the 8-zone SMB process for raffinate recycle configuration. This study was carried out for a mixture of food colorants: Tartrazine, Sunset Yellow, Crystal Ponceau (0,04g/L) and Fast Green (0,012g/L) .The respective solvent had a composition of 20% Ethanol and 80% Acetic Acid 70mmolar. The analysis of the separation performance is achieved using spectroscopy and Lambert Beer Law to calculate each molecule’s concentration at each outlet port