Development of an high-performance liquid chromatographic simulated movingbed separation from an industrial perspective

A binary test mixture consisting of cyclopentanone and cycloheptanone is us ed for the performance evaluation of a pilot-scale simulated moving bed uni t. The involved adsorption equilibria and the kinetic behavior are discusse d in detail. The results of the test runs are evaluated using the recently introduced "triangle theory" which allows to account for the overload condi tions prevailing under preparative chromatographic conditions and to select optimal operating conditions. Under optimized conditions the separation of 735 g test mixture/kg stationary phase per day with purities >99.9% for ex tract and raffinate stream has been achieved. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science BN. All rights reserved.