Investigation of using Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC)-technology to fractionate biomass

Purpose and goal

The project showed that the liquid/liquid-chromatography technique Centrifugal Partition Chromatography, CPC, could separate out components from biomass residual streams. Several high value substances of different polarity and with commercial application were isolated in semi-preparative scale.

Expected results and effects

By using CPC high value substances were isolated from different types of biomass streams. CPC should be considered as a technology to valorize biomass waste streams. Further investigations are however required to determine economic viability and how to combine different separation technologies to optimize valorization. Use of CPC-UV in characterising different biomass streams is favourable due to the lack of solid phase material, which can cause irreversible adsorption of biomass components.

Planned approach and implementation

The biomass samples showed broad polarity span and complexity, so more components were identified by separating each sample using several different polarity CPC-systems. The ’HEMWat’-series two-phase solvent systems of Heptane, Ethyl acetate, Methanol and Water aided method development. Samples were analysed by GC-MS and identified using Wiley NIST database. To enable CPC in large scale waste streams need be concentrated and for this we successfully tried liquid/liquid-extraction.