Sponsored by Georgia Tech's Renewable Bioproducts Institute and the Integrated Separations Science and Engineering Center    

About this Event
Join us for a two-day (October 21-22) Biorefinery Virtual Workshop sponsored by Georgia Tech's Renewable Bioproducts Institute and the Integrated Separations Science and Engineering Center.

The two-day workshop focuses on biorefining / bioprocessing separation and purification challenges, and will be attended by industrial members of RBI in addition to other attendees from national labs and academia.

This workshop will be held virtually on October 21 and 22.
The format is a pair of 2.5 hour sessions held each day beginning at 10:00am - 12:30pm. The theme for each day during the Biorefinery Virtual Workshop:

"The curse of complexity"
"The curse of dilution"

Discussions will include how advanced separations can help break these twin curses. Agenda below.
The workshop is free, but registration is required. Please register if interested in attending.

Register Today 

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FINAL AGENDA -- Wednesday October 21st   (Day 1 of 2)   [Agenda updated on Oct 14]

10:00-10:10 Welcome and Introduction to Workshop on Biorefinery Separation Systems

10:10-10:50
Separation of bio-based chemicals using pervaporation
Patricia Luis
Materials & Process Engineering (iMMC-IMAP), UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Pervaporation is a membrane-based technology of utmost interest when renewable biomass resources are used to produce building block molecules in order to achieve an efficient and economically viable purification step. The complexity of the mixture involves generally high separation costs. Separation processes, such as distillation and liquid–liquid extraction, have been proposed to purify target bio-based compounds. However, the high energetic cost associated with such processes is pushing the current research towards the development of alternative technologies. This presentation shows pervaporation as a potential solution to minimize the energy consumption of the purification process. Several factors that impact the performance of pervaporation have to be taken into account, though. Coupling effects, which among the critical issues in pervaporation, will be briefly discussed, and several examples will be presented.

10:50-11:00 Break

11:00-11:40
Non-thermal Dewatering Technologies for Fermentation Derived Carboxylic Acids
Eric M. Karp
Renewable Resources and Enabling Sciences Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colorado 80401, USA

Bio-based chemicals and fuels is a compelling pathway for the next generation of products that offer circularity in their carbon economy. To that end, the microbial production of carboxylic acids is attractive because they can be produced at industrially relevant titers, rates, and yields from renewable feedstocks such as lignocellulosic sugars, lignin, wet waste, and CO2. Furthermore, carboxylic acids serve as a versatile platform with chemistry to convert them to commodity chemicals including fuels, monomers, and fine chemicals. However, a major challenge in this field is the separation of carboxylic acids from dilute fermentation broth. This separation is often neglected, but is a major cost drive with ~20-40% of the production cost associated with their isolation from the broth and can be as high as 60-70%. The driver for this high cost is dewatering. Since most bio-carboxylic acids are at concentrations of 5-10 wt.% in water, and their boiling points are often greater than water, thermal dewatering at scale becomes too energy intensive even with heat integration. This seminar covers recent NREL work aimed at developing non-thermal dewatering technology for bio-carboxylic acids. Specifically, two technologies will be discussed (1) weak base adsorption and (2) process intensification through liquid-liquid extraction operated in situ during fermentation.

11:40-12:20  Facilitated discussion of theme of  “Curse of Dilution”

12:20-12:30  Day 1 wrap-up

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AGENDA -- Wednesday October 22nd   (Day 2 of 2)

10:00-10:10  Introductions and Day 2 Housekeeping

10:10-10:50
Molecular Separations from Complex Mixtures: The Selectivity Challenge
Andrew Livingston
Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, Email: a.livingston@ic.ac.uk

It is generally accepted that 40-70% of capital and operating costs in chemical and process industries are dedicated to separations. Membrane technology has the potential to provide game changing alternatives to conventional concentration and purification technologies such as evaporation, liquid extraction, adsorption, crystallisation and chromatography. To achieve this, membranes must offer resilience in harsh liquid environments, and have good permeance. Crucially, in many applications to molecular separations in liquids a membrane system should also offer an outstanding selectivity between solutes to provide an efficient process. This paper will explore materials science and engineering based approaches to improving selectivity, and illustrate the effect of selectivity on overall process complexity and feasibility.

Materials science approaches to improving selectivity between solutes revolve around designing materials for the membrane separating layers which can discriminate cleanly between two solutes or groups of solutes. Approaches include incorporating pre-structured materials with microporosity, such as MOFs, COFs, and POCs into the separating layers of membranes, or designing membranes with increasingly rigid polymer networks which build-in desired microporosities.

An engineering-based approach to improving system selectivity is to use multiple separation stages. In these systems, the permeate from one stage is typically fed into a subsequent stage for further solute fractionation. This idea has been explored through simulation and a limited number of experimental demonstrations – these latter requiring the control of pressures and flows.

The impact of these approaches will be considered in the context of separation of complex organic mixtures including lignin fractionation; crude oil separation, and recovery of biofuels, and the potential for each approach to achieve desired outcomes will be assessed.

10:50-11:00  Break

11:00-11:40
Multicomponent Separations based upon Adsorption and Membranes to Enable New and More Efficient Biorefining Processes
Sankar Nair
School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, 30332, USA

This talk will discuss our progress on developing materials-based separation processes for biorefinery applications. Three interconnected issues will be highlighted. First, we will discuss the importance of imagining biorefineries as an interconnected network of conversion and separation processes, and the possibility for materials-based separations to enable new ways of valorizing stream components. Second, we will illustrate the differing separation challenges encountered in stream fractionation versus product purification, both of which are critical for biorefineries. Third, we will explore the development and identification of versatile and inexpensive separation materials that can operate in harsh conditions of temperature, pH, and multicomponent conditions. The twin issues of stream dilution and complexity are considered throughout this discussion.

11:40-11:50  Break

11:50-12:20  Facilitated discussion of theme of “Curse of Complexity”

12:20-12:30  Workshop Wrap Up and next steps.

12:30  Virtual Poster Session