Electrodialytic recovery of some fermentation products from model solutions: techno-economic feasibility study

In this work, the technical feasibility of the batch electrodialytic (ED) recovery of trisodium citrate from aqueous solutions was compared to that of sodium itaconate and lactate by assessing the effect of electric current density (j) on the main ED performance parameters (i.e. solute recovery, ρ, and Faraday, η, efficiencies; specific energy consumption, solute and water fluxes). In particular, ρ and η were found to be practically independent of j. However, while ρ was almost unitary for all salts tested, η increased from 0.52 for trisodium citrate to 0.61–0.62 for the other two salts. Solute and water fluxes were proportional to j, whereas specific energy consumption (ϵ) was a power-law function of j. Then, a study-grade estimation of their specific ED recovery costs was carried out, thus showing that sodium lactate recovery is by far much less expensive than that of trisodium citrate or disodium itaconate.