Enabling consistent and stable production of organic and amino acids
Organic and amino acids are the building blocks for various applications across the food and beverage, personal care, biodegradable plastic, and pharmaceutical industries. For example, lactic acid is used to make polylactic acid for the rapidly growing biodegradable plastics market.
DuPont offers a full selection of high-quality strong acid cation and weak base anion ion exchange resins to tackle the challenging processing conditions that come with synthesizing organic and amino acids. These acids create significant osmotic stress during processing, making the resins physical stability a top requirement during purification. DuPont's resins offer cost-effective deashing and chromatographic purification of organic and amino acids while resisting osmotic stress.
Organic and Amino Acid Applications
Deashing with highly stable ion exchange resins
Organic and amino acids are generally produced through fermentation from sugar sources and contain a small number of impurities. To be used as raw materials in industrial chemicals and food additives, organic and amino acids require extra purification steps to meet the required product standards.
For example, one of the acid-refining techniques used for citric and lactic acids is lime precipitation. This yields calcium citrate and calcium lactate solids that can be mixed with sulfuric acid resulting in partial purification of the organic acid as well as calcium sulfate byproducts. The dissolved citric and lactic acids are subsequently purified through a deashing step using ion exchange resins.
The high acid loading causes excessive osmotic stress, which can break ion exchange resins. Therefore, manufacturers want robust ion exchange products to ensure long term operational stability.
DuPont is an industry leading ion exchange resin manufacturer, delivering resins with physical stability and purification performance for your acid production needs.
Amino acid recovery and purification with DuPont™ Amberlite™ ion exchange resins and polymeric adsorbents
DuPont offers a wide variety of ion exchange resins for the recovery and purification of essential amino acids, including lysine, histidine, tryptophan, methionine and glutamine.
Lysine is usually recovered from the fermented broth of sugar molasses, but it requires a larger volume of ion exchange resin for production than any other amino acid. Resin breakage presents challenges for the long-term stability of lysine recovery, making economic operation difficult.
DuPont™ Amberlite™ ion exchange resins resist breakage under high loading stress while maintaining purification performance. Our resin strength can match the most advanced continuous ion exchange process (CIX) with cost-effective manufacturing of lysine and other amino acids.
View all products for amino acid recovery and purification in our product finder.
Efficient chromatography separations for fast and cost-effective manufacturing
In organic and amino acid purification, DuPont provides styrenic and acrylic chromatographic separation media. Some examples of DuPont’s chromatography solutions are:
- In organic acid fermentation, DuPont’s acrylic chromatography resins can separate the organic acids from contaminating salts and residual dextrose with sharp and efficient elution peaks.
- DuPont chromatography resins quickly and efficiently elute the salts and non-anion compounds while retaining the anionic compounds. The di- and tri- carboxylic acids will be more strongly retained and will have a longer elution time than the mono-carboxylic acids.
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Deashing
Deashing with highly stable ion exchange resins
Organic and amino acids are generally produced through fermentation from sugar sources and contain a small number of impurities. To be used as raw materials in industrial chemicals and food additives, organic and amino acids require extra purification steps to meet the required product standards.
For example, one of the acid-refining techniques used for citric and lactic acids is lime precipitation. This yields calcium citrate and calcium lactate solids that can be mixed with sulfuric acid resulting in partial purification of the organic acid as well as calcium sulfate byproducts. The dissolved citric and lactic acids are subsequently purified through a deashing step using ion exchange resins.
The high acid loading causes excessive osmotic stress, which can break ion exchange resins. Therefore, manufacturers want robust ion exchange products to ensure long term operational stability.
DuPont is an industry leading ion exchange resin manufacturer, delivering resins with physical stability and purification performance for your acid production needs.
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Amino Acid Recovery and Purification
Amino acid recovery and purification with DuPont™ Amberlite™ ion exchange resins and polymeric adsorbents
DuPont offers a wide variety of ion exchange resins for the recovery and purification of essential amino acids, including lysine, histidine, tryptophan, methionine and glutamine.
Lysine is usually recovered from the fermented broth of sugar molasses, but it requires a larger volume of ion exchange resin for production than any other amino acid. Resin breakage presents challenges for the long-term stability of lysine recovery, making economic operation difficult.
DuPont™ Amberlite™ ion exchange resins resist breakage under high loading stress while maintaining purification performance. Our resin strength can match the most advanced continuous ion exchange process (CIX) with cost-effective manufacturing of lysine and other amino acids.
View all products for amino acid recovery and purification in our product finder.
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Chromatography Separation
Efficient chromatography separations for fast and cost-effective manufacturing
In organic and amino acid purification, DuPont provides styrenic and acrylic chromatographic separation media. Some examples of DuPont’s chromatography solutions are:
- In organic acid fermentation, DuPont’s acrylic chromatography resins can separate the organic acids from contaminating salts and residual dextrose with sharp and efficient elution peaks.
- DuPont chromatography resins quickly and efficiently elute the salts and non-anion compounds while retaining the anionic compounds. The di- and tri- carboxylic acids will be more strongly retained and will have a longer elution time than the mono-carboxylic acids.
Find products for organic and amino acids
View a list of products suitable for organic and amino acid processing.
Explore other food & beverage applications
Our ion exchange resin and membrane technologies can be leveraged to help produce cost-effective, high-performance sweeteners such as glucose, fructose, allulose, and sorbitol.
We provide FilmTec™ Hypershell™ elements and ion exchange resins to help you process milk into the essential foods and ingredients we use every day.
DuPont is a leading provider of purification technologies for liquid beverages. Our resin and membrane technologies help beverage producers improve safety, lower shipping costs, and enhance product health benefits.
Related industries
In addition to providing crop to table separation and purification solutions for the organic and amino acids industry, DuPont provides reliable solutions for your wastewater needs.
We develop best-in-class technologies, accompanied by an advanced product portfolio of solutions, to address your crucial wastewater challenges.
Related resources
See what’s possible
Ask how we can help solve your separation and purification challenges for organic and amino acids industry.