Simulated Moving Bed Technology for the Separation of Fructose from Date Syrup

Abstract

In North African countries, common or second quality dates are not harvested, but rather left to rot, although they are rich in fructose and glucose, sugars which offer more interesting nutritional properties than sucrose used as common table sugar. The recovery of fructose and glucose from these common dates requires the development of an efficient industrial process capable of separating both sugars. The objective of this study was therefore to test the Continuous Chromatographic Simulated Moving Bed technology (SMB) for the separation of both sugars from date syrup and the production of 90% High-Fructose-Syrup (HFS-90). Consisting of four adsorption columns, a laboratory SMB system was used to test the effect on separation of: date syrup sugar concentrations of 37, 26 and 22 %; Feed or syrup and Eluent or distilled water flow rate. After running 27 different combinations of operating parameters, the Feed and Eluent flow rates of 0.45 and 3.2 pore volume/h (pv/h), respectively, produced the highest fructose concentration, but HFS-90 was produced only with the date syrup at 22 % sugar. Accordingly, the SMB process is a promising industrial technology for the recovery of fructose and glucose from date pulp syrup. Optimal operating parameters need optimization depending on date syrup sugar concentration.