Itaconic acid is a biobased organic acid with clear potential to become a relevant renewable building-block chemical. However, to compete with petrochemical processes, the production cost of biobased processes, particularly the downstream processing contribution, needs to be reduced. In this work, composite membranes comprising ultrathin films of crosslinked poly[(-cresyl glycidyl ether)--formaldehyde] and branched polyethyleneimine on mixed cellulose ester supports were developed for application in the primary recovery of itaconic acid from fermentation broths. In contrast to commercial and literature-reported counterparts, these membranes exhibit low itaconic acid rejections over a wide range of pH, ionic strength, organic acid concentration and operating pressure. Moreover, these membranes can efficiently recover itaconic acid from clarified fermentation broth as well as unclarified fermentation broth of cultivations, with average rejections below 15 % recorded over 8 h of operation. Lastly, the performance of these membranes was compared to literature-reported strategies for primary recovery of biobased organic acids. The efficient recovery of itaconic acid from unclarified fermentation broth opens the possibility to perform clarification and primary recovery simultaneously, thus simplifying the downstream processing of biobased itaconic acid considerably.

中文翻译：

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用于从发酵液中澄清和初级回收生物基衣康酸的复合超薄膜

衣康酸是一种生物基有机酸，具有成为相关可再生基础化学品的明显潜力。然而，为了与石化工艺竞争，生物基工艺的生产成本，特别是下游加工的成本，需要降低。在这项工作中，开发了包含混合纤维素酯载体上的交联聚[(-甲苯缩水甘油醚)-甲醛]和支化聚乙烯亚胺超薄膜的复合膜，用于从发酵液中初级回收衣康酸。与商业和文献报道的同类产品相比，这些膜在较宽的 pH 值、离子强度、有机酸浓度和操作压力范围内表现出较低的衣康酸截留率。此外，这些膜可以有效地从澄清的发酵液以及未澄清的培养发酵液中回收衣康酸，在运行 8 小时内记录的平均截留率低于 15%。最后，将这些膜的性能与文献报道的生物基有机酸的初级回收策略进行比较。从未澄清的发酵液中有效回收衣康酸使得同时进行澄清和初级回收成为可能，从而大大简化了生物基衣康酸的下游加工。