Development of simulated moving-bed chromatography processes for the high-purity recovery of fucose from undaria pinnatifida hydrolysates

Abstract

Fucose belongs to deoxys-monosaccharides and is a raw material for pharmaceuticals and health functional food, and its useful industrial application values were reported. Fucose mainly exists in brown algae, which is one of macroalgae, and in microalgae with small amount. It can be obtained by acid hydrolyzing the biomasses. There are many impurities in the hydrolysate such as other monosaccharides, amino acids, salts and residues. Monosaccharides are critical problem to produce high purity fucose because they have very similar structures and characteristics with fucose. In this study, simulated moving-bed chromatography (SMBc) was introduced to solve the problem. First, proper adsorbent was selected and its intrinsic parameters were evaluated. Then, we obtain 97% purity of fucose from model solution with 4 g/L of monosaccharides components stemmed from microalgal hydrolysate through developing SMBc process. Also, 99% purity of fucose was purified with 98% yield through developed two-stage SMBc process from a model solution composed of monosaccharides, amino acids, and glycerol. For the study with real biomasses, fucoidan was chosen first because its composition of hydrolysate was less complex than that of Undaria pinnatifida. Feed solution for SMBc process was prepared by acid hydrolysis and pretreatment processes. We developed two-stage SMBc process, and successfully recovered fucose with over 99% purity. Through whole processes, the total yield of fucose was about 70%. The loss of fucose occurred in SMBc process was about 3%, and rest of them arose in pretreatment processes. Finally, development of SMBc process for the high-purity recovery of fucose from U. pinnatifida was carried out. Feed solution for SMBc process was prepared through acid hydrolysis and pretreatment processes including neutralization, activated carbon treatment, electrodialysis, and ion-exchange chromatography, and simple lab-scale optimization of pretreatment was performed to reduce the loss of fucose. Two-stage SMBc process (Ring I & Ring II) was developed. After Ring I SMBc process, over 97% purity of fucose was obtained. Then, over 99% purity of fucose was gained after Ring II SMBc process. There was no loss occurred in SMBc process, but about 23% of loss arose in pretreatment process.