MULTICOMPONENT SEPARATION USING A COLUMN-SWITCHING CHROMATOGRAPHIC METHOD

A cyclic chromatographic process based on the method of column switchi ng was used to separate a three-component carbohydrate mixture. It per mits continuous introduction of the feed and is designed to produce hi gher product concentration compared to a normal elution cyclic process . A fixed-bed model incorporating axial dispersion and a linear drivin g force for mass transfer was successfully used to estimate optimum op erating conditions (switch times and fluid-flow rates). Its experiment al setup can be easily constructed by modifying the apparatus of a sim ulated countercurrent process since both systems comprise segmented co lumns equipped with on-off valves for fluid-flow control. This allows one to conduct either multicomponent separation based on elution opera tion or binary separation based on countercurrent operation using esse ntially the same set of experimental apparatus with minor modification .