Simulated moving bed purification of fucoidan hydrolysate for an efficient production of fucose with high purity and little loss

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Highlights

  • SMB for an efficient fucose-production from fucoidan hydrolysate (FH) was developed.

  • The intrinsic parameters of the components contained in the FH were determined.

  • The determined parameters were used in the optimal design of the SMB targeted at FH.

  • The optimal column configurations for high purity and high recovery were clarified.

  • The fucose purity from the FH-targeted SMB reached nearly 100% with the loss of 3.1%.

Abstract

Economical production of fucose from fucoidan requires an efficient process for the separation of high-purity fucose from fucoidan hydrolysate. To address this issue, we aimed to develop a simulated-moving-bed (SMB) process that could be well tailored to the final-stage purification of fucoidan hydrolysate while ensuring the attainment of high purity and high recovery. For this task, we first determined the intrinsic parameters of all the components in the fucoidan hydrolysate. The resulting intrinsic parameters were then applied to the optimal design of the considered SMB process, in which the optimal column configuration and operation parameters leading to the highest removal rates for the side-products (or impurities) of the fucoidan hydrolysate were determined using a genetic-algorithm and a column-model in combination. On the basis of such optimal configurations and operation parameters, the SMB experiments were carried out while loading a real fucoidan-hydrolysate solution into the SMB feed port. It was confirmed from the experimental results that the developed process in this study was quite effective in the continuous-mode recovery of fucose from the fucoidan hydrolysate with high purity (nearly 100%) and little loss (<3.1%).

Introduction

The merits of chromatographic processes in the detailed purification of valuable bioproducts have been identified in various fields. Among them, it is worth noticing their recent applications, which were mostly related to a final-stage purification of biomass hydrolysates for production of valuable biochemicals or useful biofuel ingredients [1], [2], [3]. Although most of such applications were successful, the extents of their contributions to the final purity of a target product or the economical efficiency of an overall production process turned out to be quite different depending on the structure and operation mode of the chromatographic process used [4], [5], [6].

It has been reported that the chromatographic processes based on a simulated moving bed (SMB) separation principle with multiple columns and multiple ports could excel conventional batch chromatographic processes by a wide margin in separation performances and production rates [4], [5], [6], [7]. The goal of this study is to explore the feasibility of utilizing such an SMB chromatographic process in a final-stage purification of fucoidan hydrolysate for production of high-purity fucose, which has recently been in the limelight in the industries related to anti-aging cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and health functional foods [8], [9], [10], [11], [12].

Fucoidan, which is widely available in brown macroalgaes, is composed of fucose-containing polysaccharides [13], [14], and its hydrolysis can thus generate fucose and other side-products. However, there have been no previous attempts at the application of an SMB technology to the recovery of fucose from fucoidan hydrolysate. If a well-designed SMB process can be developed for an efficient recovery of high-purity fucose form fucoidan hydrolysate, it will surely contribute to an improvement in the economical efficiency of the fucoidan-based industries for fucose production.

To realize the aforementioned SMB purification of fucoidan hydrolysate for fucose production, the following tasks were performed in this study. First, the constituent components of the fucoidan hydrolysate that had undergone the pretreatment processing for decolorization and deionization were investigated. Then, the intrinsic parameters of the fucoidan-hydrolysate components were estimated and used in the stage of determining an optimal set of SMB configuration and operation parameters. In this stage, the optimal column configuration (column number in each zone) leading to the highest removal rate for the side-products (or impurities) of the fucoidan hydrolysate was clarified under the total number of available columns in an existing SMB unit. Based on the resulting configuration and operation parameters from such an optimal design, the SMB experiments were performed and the results verified that the developed SMB process in this study could recover fucose from the fucoidan hydrolysate with the purity of nearly 100% while keeping it loss below 3.1%.

Section snippets

Materials

Fucoidan powder was supplied from Bion F&B Co. (Seoul, Korea) and served as a starting material for the production of high-purity fucose. Sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide that were used in the fucoidan hydrolysis and the hydrolysate neutralization were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Co. (USA) and Junsei Chemical Co. (Japan) respectively. Ammonium sulfate and sodium sulfate, which were utilized as the electrode and permeate solutions, respectively, in the electrolysis of the fucoidan

Intrinsic parameters of the constituent components of fucoidan hydrolysate

Prior to the development of the SMB process under consideration, it was necessary to identify the constituent components of the fucoidan hydrolysate, which had undergone the pretreatment processing that was explained in the experimental section. For this task, the HPLC analysis was carried out for the fucoidan hydrolysate. It was found from the HPLC analysis that the fucoidan hydrolysate contained seven monosaccharides including fucose, and one unknown component (named as “UK” hereafter).

Since

Conclusions

In this study, we developed the SMB process for the continuous-mode recovery of high-purity fucose from the fucoidan hydrolysate that had been decolorized and deionized through the relevant pretreatment processing. It was first found that the fucoidan hydrolysate contained various monosugar side-products and one unknown impurity besides a target product component (fucose). The adsorption and mass-transfer parameters of all the aforementioned components were estimated on the basis of the

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (grant number NRF-2015R1A2A2A01003455). Also, it was partially supported by the Advanced Biomass R&D Center (ABC) of Global Frontier Project funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (ABC-2010-0029728).

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