Adsorption materials for the recovery and separation of biobased molecules

In this thesis we studied several strategies to improve adsorption technology for the adsorption of biobased molecules. These strategies are based on the adsorbent as well as the adsorption process. A systematic investigation of the chemical and physical structure of resin materials and their relation to adsorption properties was performed. The separation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from glucose was studied for this purpose with different adsorbents and we found that the hypercrosslinked resin Dowex Optipore L-493 (Optipore) showed the best results due to the highly accessible BET surface area. This also ensured fast kinetic adsorption properties which was shown with zero length column experiments and breakthrough curves. Different resins were incorporated in mixed matrix membranes to further enhance the kinetic properties of the adsorption system. Due to the open structure of the MMMs, the MMMs show improved adsorption capacity and fast adsorption rates at high flow rates, which allows for high throughput application of MMMs for HMF separation. Furthermore this research shows that MMMs could be a good alternative for traditional packed beds for the adsorption of small molecules. Molecular imprinting was used to increase the selectivity of the adsorbent. The molecular imprinted membranes investigated show clear pH transitions and fast kinetics. Consequently, molecular imprinting of membranes (MIMs) seems to be a very interesting technology for the selective recovery or separation of specific molecules from complex feed mixtures and therefore the downstream processing in biorefinery. However the membranes showed very stringent requirements regarding the sorption conditions which is in conflict with the process streams in the downstream processing of biorefinery products.