Five-Zone Simulating Moving Bed for Ternary Separation

Five-zone Simulating Moving Bed (SMB) system, designed for ternary separation, is a modified form of standard four-zone SMB which is only effective in binary separation. It was reported in literature that the five-zone SMB separates the extract-II stream with a lower purity value than that of raffinate and extract-I streams. To address this issue, five zone SMB was designed, using safety margin method for the separation of a ternary amino acid mixture comprises of methionine, phenylalanine and tryptophan having linear isotherms values. The operating conditions at fixed zone-I flow rate were calculated by using triangle theory and the developed mathematical model was run for the simulation studies with Aspen Chromatography vis 12.1. (2004) simulator. The simulation results of the 2-extract five-zone SMB system were illustrated for the effect of change in zone safety factor (β2, β3 and β4) values on the separation performance (product purity and recovery) and on solutes band propagation behavior at cyclic steady state.