Process for recovering carboxylic acids from sugar cane industry by-products

Abstract

Food industry by-products such as molasses and vinasses may provide an important source of organic acids. The aim of this study is to compare three processes, precipitation, chromatography and liquid-liquid extraction, for the recovery of carboxylic acids from sugarcane molasses from Réunion Island. Precipitation was performed with different temperatures by addition of calcium chloride. The results revealed that precipitation can recover aconitic acid efficiently from molasses. Liquid-liquid extraction was carried out with TBP in n-dodecane. The results indicated that the selectivity depends on solution pH. Extraction with molasses is hindered by the appearance of a third phase. Chromatography was performed on ion exchange resin (Amberlite IRA 900 Cl) from Rohm & Haas. The extraction yields were low in the synthetic solutions and the recovery of carboxylic acids from molasses was impossible due to their high viscosity.