New extraction techniques on bioseparations: 1. Reactive extraction

Abstract

The complexity of downstream processes for biosynthetic products constitutes a particularity of industrial biotechnologies, especially because of the biosynthetic product high dilution in fermentation broth, their chemical and thermal liability and the presence of secondary products. For these reasons, new separation techniques have been developed and applied to bioseparations. Among them, reactive extraction, pertraction (extraction and transport through liquid membranes) and direct extraction from broths have considerable potential and are required for the further development of many biotechnologies. This review is structured on two parts and presents our original results of the studies on the separation of some biosynthetic products (antibiotics, carboxylic acids, amino acids, alcohols) by reactive extraction in the first part, and by pertraction and direct extraction from broths without biomass filtration in the second. For all the analyzed cases, these extraction techniques simplify the technologies by reducing material and energy consumption, by avoiding product inhibition, by increasing the separation selectivity, therefore decreasing the overall cost of the product.