Journal of Membrane Science 365 (2010) 294301

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Journal of Membrane Science

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Integration of conventional electrodialysis and electrodialysis with bipolar membranes for production of organic acids
Yaoming Wang, Xu Zhang, Tongwen Xu
Laboratory of Functional Membranes, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, Peoples Republic of China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
To reduce the cost of electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) for production of organic acids, conventional electrodialysis (CED) was integrated with EDBM, i.e., CED supplied concentrated organic salts as the feed to EDBM. To assess the adaptability of this integration, sodium gluconate was chosen as a model agent for production of gluconic acid. Results indicated that this integration could achieve an apparent current efciency higher than 100% and low energy consumption due to the inward concentration of gluconate and electrode reactions in CED. Besides, the process cost of CEDEDBM was estimated to be $0.31 kg1 , which was less than that of EDBM ($0.39 kg1 ). This integration not only made the production cost-effective but also kept the operation of EDBM stable. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 22 July 2010 Received in revised form 6 September 2010 Accepted 11 September 2010 Available online 17 September 2010 Keywords: Conventional electrodialysis Electrodialysis with bipolar membranes Organic acids Gluconic acid Ion exchange membrane

1. Introduction To date, electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) has been accepted as an environmentally benign acidifying technique for production of organic acids because it can split water into H+ and OH inside bipolar membranes and supply H+ and OH in situ without introduction of other salts [14]. Though EDBM is of the environmental benignity, it has not been industrialized widely due to the high process cost. On one hand, the bipolar membrane is costly ($1350 m2 in China). On the other, a decrease in current efciency and a sharp increase in energy consumption often occur at a high conversion rate of organic salts in EDBM due to the depletion of salts in the feed compartment and the diffusion of organic acids. When it comes to this shortcoming, it can be overcome to a great extent by keeping the salt above a certain concentration in the feed compartment. For this purpose, conventional electrodialysis (CED) can be employed to concentrate organic salts and feed the concentrate to EDBM. Such concept has been applied to process dairy products [5,6] and organic salts [2,7], and acquired positive effects. Note that these integrations had CED and EDBM operate separately, i.e., the dilute solution of salt was rst concentrated to a high level in CED and then fed into EDBM. Different from the reports above, this research integrates CED and EDBM for production of organic acids, and the synergy of CED

and EDBM will be the focus of this research. For experiments, sodium gluconate (NaGlu) is chosen as a model organic salt, and the effects of some parameters, such as the current density of CED, electrolyte concentration, and stack congurations, on the production of gluconic acid (HGlu) will be investigated. 2. Experimental 2.1. Materials A cation-exchange membrane (Neosepta CMX, Tokuyama Soda Inc., Japan), an anion-exchange membrane (Neosepta AMX, Tokuyama Soda Inc., Japan), and a bipolar membrane (Neosepta BP1, Tokuyama Soda Inc., Japan) were used for experiments, and their properties are listed in Table 1. The chemicals were of analytical grade. Distilled water was used throughout. 2.2. Experimental set-up As shown in Fig. 1, a laboratory-scale setup was used for experiments. The CED and EDBM stacks were composed of one anode and one cathode as well as membranes (BP, bipolar exchange membrane; A, anion exchange membrane; C, cation exchange membrane). For integration, CED is combined with an EDBM stack of BPC conguration (Fig. 1a CEDEDBM (BPC)) and an EDBM stack of BPA conguration (Fig. 1b CEDEDBM (BPA)), respectively. For comparison with the CEDEDBM setup, an EDBM stack of BPC conguration (Fig. 1c EDBM (BPC)) was chosen since BPC

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 551 360 1587; fax: +86 551 360 1592. E-mail address: twxu@ustc.edu.cn (T. Xu). 0376-7388/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2010.09.018

Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 365 (2010) 294301 Table 1 Properties of the membranes used in CED and EDBM stack. Membrane type Neosepta BP-1 Neosepta AMX Neosepta CMX Thickness ( m) 200350 120180 220260 IEC (meq g1 ) 1.41.7 1.51.8 Area resistance ( 2.03.5 2.03.5 cm2 ) Voltage drop (V) 1.2-2.2

295

Efciency (%) >98

The data are collected from the product brochure provided by the company.

conguration is the most favorable stack conguration for economical consideration [8]. Take the CEDEDBM (BPC) setup (Fig. 1a) for an example, there are 3 loops: the concentrate compartment of CED and the acid compartment of EDBM were connected as a loop; the other two loops were established between the dilute compartments of CED and the electrode compartments of EDBM, respectively. Each loop was equipped with an external 1000 cm3 beaker, allowing for continuous circulation by a submersible pump (AP1000, Zhongshan Zhenghua Electronics Co. Ltd., China). The effective membrane area was 7.07 cm2 . The electrodes were made of titanium coated with ruthenium. The electrodes were connected with a direct current power supply (WYL17032, Hangzhou Yuhang Siling Electronics Co. Ltd., China). Before the current was applied, the solution of each compartment was circulated for half

an hour, and all the visible gas bubbles were eliminated. Na2 SO4 was added as electrode rinse in the EDBM stack. Note that the feed in this study is not with pure gluconate ion, but with electrolyte (Na2 SO4 ) as well. The reason for this is the low conductivity of gluconate ion and small effective membrane area of the stack. As the membrane area is directly correlated to the feed concentration. It is uneconomical to perform this small scale (membrane area of 7.07 cm2 ) CEDEDBM process with high feed concentration (higher than 0.5 mol dm3 ). If the CEDEDBM stack in this study is conducted under pure condition (only with gluconate ion in the feed), the voltage drop of the stack is too much high (higher than 100 V) and the energy consumption is too much high correspondingly. Moreover, a large amount of heat is generated under high voltage condition, which is detrimental to the

Fig. 1. Congurations of CEDEDBM stacks and a single EDBM stack: (a) CEDEDBM (BPC); (b) CEDEDBM (BPA); (C) EDBM (BPC). BP, bipolar membrane; C, cationexchange membrane; A, anion-exchange membrane.

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Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 365 (2010) 294301

22

18

a
20mAcm
20
-2 -2

30mAcm -2 40mAcm 50mAcm 60mAcm

-2 -2

17

18

Voltage drop of EDBM (V)

Voltage drop of CED (V)

16

16 15 14 14 12

10

13

8 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

12

Time (min)
0.08 4.0

20mAcm

-2 -2

c
apparent energy consumption total energy consumption apparent current efficiency absolute current efficiency

140

A cid concentration ( mol dm )

Energy consumption ( kWh kg )

30mAcm -2 40mAcm
0.06

-3

3.5

50mAcm 60mAcm

-2

-1

-2

120

Current efficiency (%)

3.0 100 2.5 80 2.0

0.04

0.02

1.5 0.00 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 20 30 40 50

-2

60

60

Time ( min)

Current density ( mAcm )

Fig. 2. Effect of the current density of CED on the production of HGlu: (a) the voltage drops of CED and EDBM; (b) acid yield; (c) energy consumption and current efciency. Experimental conditions: CEDEDBM (BPC); current density of EDBM, 50 mA cm2 ; electrolyte, 0.1 mol dm3 ; sodium gluconate, 0.05 mol dm3 ; ow rate, 27 dm3 h1 .

membrane. Fortunately, this mixture feed does not affect any of our above analysis, because sulfuric acid is a strong acid and gluconic acid is a weak one. Both the dissociation of sodium sulfate and sodium gluconate will nally contribute the production of gluconic acid. Furthermore, the separation of gluconic acid from electrolyte does not exist in large-scale production, as the feed concentration can be higher than 2 mol dm3 . Control experiments with sodium sulfate as the only feed solution were also carried out to evaluate the feasibility of CEDEDBM process.

2.3. Determination of gluconic acid concentration The HGlu concentration was determined by titration with NaOH using phenolphthalein (pH 8.09.8) as indicator. 2.4. Calculation of current efciency and energy consumption Considering the comparison between integrated and separate stacks, an apparent current efciency app and absolute current

Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 365 (2010) 294301

297

30

30

0.05moldm 0.1moldm 0.2moldm

-3

-3 -3 -3

25

Voltage drop of CED stack (V)

0.3moldm -3 0.4moldm

25

Voltage drop of EDBM stack (V)

20

20

15

15

10

10

5 0 0.08 20 40 60 80 100 120 6 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Time (min) b c

Time (min)

0.05moldm 0.10moldm 0.20moldm

0.06

-3 -3 -3 -3 -3

140 5

Acid concentration ( moldm )

0.30moldm 0.40moldm

Energy consumption ( kWh kg )

-3

-1

0.04

apparent energy consumption total energy consumption apparent current efficiency absolute current efficiency

120

Current efficiency (%)

100 3

0.02

80

1 0.00 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4

60

Time (min)

-3 Electrolyte concentration ( moldm )

Fig. 3. Effect of electrolyte concentration on the integration stack performance: (a) the voltage drop across the CED and EDBM stack; (b) acid yield; (c) energy consumption and current efciency. Experiment conditions: stack conguration, CEDEDBM (BPC); current density of CED and EDBM stack, 50 mA cm2 ; sodium gluconate concentration 0.05 mol dm3 ; ow rate, 27 dm3 h1 .

efciency abs was dened as Eq. (1), which is similar to that of a common EDBM process [9]:

app = abs =

(Ct C0 )zBF NIEDBM t (Ct C0 )zBF N(ICED +IEDBM )t

(1)

where Ct and C0 (mol dm3 ) are the HGlu concentrations at time t and 0, respectively; z is the absolute valence (z = 1 for gluconic ion); B (dm3 ) is the volume of solution in each loop; ICED and IEDBM (A) are the currents of CED and EDBM, respectively; F is the Faraday constant (96,485C mol1 ); N is the number of repeating units (N = 1). In this work, t (s) is equal to 7200 s, and the change of uid volume in each loop was negligible, that is, B = 0.5 dm3 .

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a
Energy consumption ( kWhkg )
-1

100
5 apparent energy consumption total energy consumption apparent current efficiency absolute current efficiency

80

60

2 20 30 40 50
-2

60

40

Current density ( mAcm )

b
12 100 apparent energy consumption total energy consumption apparent current efficiency absolute current efficiency

10

80

60 6 40

2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4

-3

20 0.5

Sodium sulfate concentration ( moldm )

Fig. 4. Performance of pure feed salt (sodium sulfate) in CEDEDBM (BPC) stack: (a) Effect of current density on energy consumption and current efciency; (b) effect of feed concentration on energy consumption and current efciency. Experiment conditions: stack conguration, CEDEDBM (BPC); current density of EDBM stack, 50 mA cm2 ; ow rate, 27 dm3 h1 ; sodium sulfate concentration in (a), 0.5 mol dm3 ; current density of CED stack in (b), 50 mA cm2 .

The apparent energy consumption Eapp (kWh kg1 ) and total energy consumption Etot was calculated by extrapolating the results for the production of 1 kg of acid based on Eq. (2): Eapp = Etot =
UEDBM IEDBM dt Ct BM

(UCED ICED +UEDBM IEDBM )dt Ct BM

(2)

where UCED and UEDBM (V) are the voltage drops across the CED and EDBM stacks, respectively; ICED and IEDBM (A) are the currents of CED and EDBM, respectively; Ct (mol dm3 ) is the acid concentration at time t (s); B (dm3 ) is the volume of acid loop; M is the molecular weight of HGlu (196.14 g mol1 ). 3. Results and discussions 3.1. Effect of the current density of CED on the production of gluconic acid Fig. 2 shows the effect of current density of CED on the production of gluconic acid by using the CEDEDBM (BPC) setup. As a tradeoff between the efciency of water splitting [10] and the lifetime of bipolar membranes [11], a current density of 50 mA cm2 was chosen for the operation of EDBM. The concentrations of Na2 SO4 and NaGlu were 0.10 and 0.05 mol dm3 , respectively.

Fig. 2a shows the effect of current density of CED on the voltage drop of CED and EDBM stack. The results indicate that the voltage drops of both CED and EDBM stack decrease with the elapse of time. Meantime, the higher the current density is, the higher the voltage drop of CED stack will be. Normally, the voltage drop of CED stack should increase with time, which is due to the depleting of salt in the dilute compartment. The decrease of voltage drop in the CED stack is attributed to the particular conguration of CEDEDBM (BPC) stack. For one thing, H+ generated from the water dissociation of bipolar membrane is introducing to the CED stack. The conductivity of gluconic acid is much higher than that of sodium gluconate (the equivalent conductance of HGlu and NaGlu is 380 104 and 80.5 104 s cm2 equiv1 , respectively [12]), the electrical resistance of CED will decrease with an increase in the concentration of HGlu. For another, H+ and OH which is ascribe to the electrode reactions are also introducing to the CED stack. In theory, H+ and OH can be neutralized with each other because the anode and cathode compartments are circulated in a loop in the CED stack. However, the mobility of H+ through cation exchange membrane is much higher than OH through the anion exchange membrane, so the electrode reaction generated H+ and OH can be distributed in the acid and salt compartment separately. This assumption has been conrmed from the high apparent current efciency of the EDBM stack in the following discussion. To sum up, H+ and OH comes from water dissociation of bipolar membrane and electrode reactions account for the decreasing of voltage drop in the CED stack. In the case of EDBM stack, the concentrating of sodium gluconate in CED and water dissociation of bipolar membrane leads to a sharply decrease of electrical resistance. The voltage drops of EDBM among different CED current densities are not pronounced, which indicates that the contribution of water dissociation of bipolar membrane to the voltage drop is more signicant than that of concentrating of gluconate salt. As shown in Fig. 2b, the acid concentration increases nearly proportion to time elapses. In addition, the acid concentration increases with the increase of current density of CED stack. Normally, the yield of acid is stem from the water dissociation of bipolar membrane or the water splitting of cation exchange membrane due to concentration polarization, both of which are directly related to the current density of the EDBM stack. But the current density of the EDBM stack have been xed at 50 mA cm2 , so the increase of acid concentration must come from the CED stack. In the CED stack, both electrode reactions and water splitting of mono-polar membranes can possibly lead to the yield of acid. However, water splitting of mono-polar membranes has low efciency and the generated H+ and OH recombines [13], so this effect is insignicant. Therefore, the electrodes reactions of CED stack are contribute to the enhanced increase of acid concentration as discussed in the above section. Fig. 2c shows the effect of current density of CED on the current efciency and energy consumption of EDBM stack. The apparent current efciencies of EDBM stack increase from 98% to 131% when current densities of CED increase from 20 to 50 mA cm2 , indicating extra H+ besides bipolar membrane dissociation is also introduced to the EDBM stack. While the absolute current efciencies decrease from 70% to 59% in this time. The compete migration of H+ /Na+ through cation exchange membrane and the molecular diffusion of gluconic acid through the bipolar and cation exchange membrane determine that the current efciency is lower than 100% at low CED current density. As current density increase, electrode generated H+ increase correspondingly, and then the induction of H+ overwhelm than that of migration out of the acid compartment. When the current density of CED stack is in the range of 2050 mA cm2 , the apparent energy consumption of EDBM stack is between 1.45 and 2.00 kWh kg1 . Even the energy consumption of CED and EDBM stack are both considered, the total energy consumption is about 2.553.70 kWh kg1 , which is similar to our experimental result of

Current efficiency (%)

Energy consumption ( kWhkg )

-1

Current efficiency (%)

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a single EDBM process (1.554.72 kWh kg1 ) [14]. But we should take attention that not only gluconic acid but also concentrated gluconate salt can be obtained with the similar energy consumption in one step. Furthermore, the total energy consumption of the CEDEDBM stack increases with the increase of current density of CED stack, indicating a great part of electrical energy is consumed to overcome the electrical resistance of the CED stack as the current density increases. From the discussion above, an accompanying CED stack is conducive to the performance of EDBM process, especially when CED and EDBM are both need to be carried out in some circumstances.

stack, which could be used to explain for the high apparent current efciency. The apparent and total energy consumption for the production of gluconic acid decrease with the increase of electrolyte concentration, which is in the range of 0.90-2.48 Wh kg1 and 1.825.56 Wh kg1 , respectively. The low energy consumption of EDBM stack, such as 0.90 Wh kg1 when electrolyte concentration is 0.4 mol dm3 , suggesting a synergistic effect of the inward integration of CED and EDBM is achieved. 3.3. Performances of pure feed salt (sodium sulfate) in CEDEDBM (BPC) stack To test the feasibility of the combined CEDEDBM under pure salt conditions, control experiments with sodium sulfate as the only feed solution are also conducted. Trends similar to the mixed feed salt process have also been observed in these pure feed salts (Fig. 4). Energy consumptions and current efciencies decrease and increase with the increasing of feed concentration, respectively, which are well consistent with the results of mixed feed salts (Fig. 3b). Moreover, the performances of CEDEDBM (BPC) under pure salt conditions are lower than that of the mixed feed salts, indicating the signicant contribution of the dissociation of sodium gluconate in mixed feed salts. 3.4. Comparison with CEDEDBM (BPA) conguration and process economics For comparison, another integration conguration CEDEDBM (BPA) (Fig. 1b), was also tested for gluconic acid production comparison. Fig. 5 shows the energy consumption and current efciency of the different stack congurations. Among them, CEDEDBM (BPC) and CEDEDBM (BPA) were the integration stacks, while the EDBM (BPC) was a single EDBM stack (cf. Figs. 1ac). The current density of the all the stacks is 50 mA cm2 ; electrolyte concentration is 0.30 mol dm3 ; and the sodium gluconate concentration is 0.05 mol dm3 . The apparent energy consumption of EDBM stack in both combined cases (CEDEDBM (BPC) or CEDEDBM (BPA)) is less than that the single EDBM (BPC) process. However, when the energy consumption of CED stack is also considered in the integration process, the CEDEDBM (BPA) integration process does not indicate much advantages than a

3.2. Effect of electrolyte concentration on the production of gluconic acid Fig. 3a shows the effect of electrolyte concentration on the voltage drop of CED and EDBM stack when the current density of CED and EDBM is 50 mA cm2 and sodium gluconate concentration is 0.05 mol dm3 . Results indicate that the voltage drop of both CED and EDBM stack decreases with an increase of electrolyte concentration. The reason can be ascribed to common sense: the higher the concentration of electrolyte, the lower the electrical resistance of the membrane and solution. At the same time, the voltage drops of CED stack increase in the rst 10 min and then decrease with time elapses in low electrolyte concentration. There are mainly two counteracting effects that account for this result. On one hand, after the depletion of ions in the intermediate layer of bipolar membrane, water dissociation takes place, and H+ and OH begin to ll the bipolar membrane and decrease the voltage drop across bipolar membrane gradually. On the other hand, the concentration of gluconate in the acid compartment is higher than that in the dilute compartment of CED, which is due to the concentrating effect of CED stack. In CED stack, Na+ and Glu can migrate through cation and anion exchange membrane, respectively, and accumulate in the acid compartment. Meantime, Na+ in the acid compartment transports through the cation exchange membrane and into the cathode compartment of EDBM stack. The amount of Na+ migration out of the acid compartment is more than that of into the compartment, which is the dominant effect at the beginning of experiment. In contrast, the generated H+ of bipolar membrane accumulates with time, the overwhelming of the rst effect leads to a sharply decrease of voltage drop. While in the case of high electrolyte concentration, the change of conductivity due to diluting effect of CED is not pronounced, so an extreme point is not appeared in the voltage drop of CED stack. Fig. 3b shows the effect of electrolyte concentration on acid concentration when the current density of CED and EDBM is 50 mA cm2 and sodium gluconate concentration is 0.05 mol dm3 . Similarly to effect of current density of CED stack in Fig. 2b, the yield of acid increases as time elapses. There is a slightly increase of acid concentration with the increase of electrolyte concentration. Although the mobility of H+ is higher than Na+ , Na+ will have more predominance in quantity as Na2 SO4 concentration increases, so there is less loss of H+ for gluconic production and thus an increase in acid concentration. There have been conrmed from the signicant increase of current efciency with the increasing of electrolyte concentration. Fig. 3c shows the effect of electrolyte concentration on the current efciency and energy consumption of EDBM stack when the current density of CED and EDBM is 50 mA cm2 and sodium gluconate concentration is 0.05 mol dm3 . The apparent and total current efciency of EDBM stack is respective between 110.3140.3% and 55.271.2% when electrolyte concentration is in the range of 0.050.4 mol dm3 . The higher concentration of Na+ , the less lose of H+ through cation exchange membrane of the EDBM

4 apparent energy consumption total energy consumption apparent current efficiency absolute current efficiency

140

Energy consumption ( kWhkg )

120

-1

Current efficiency (%)

100 2 80 1 60

40

Different cell configuration

Fig. 5. Energy consumption and current efciency for different cell congurations: CEDEDBM (BPC); CEDEDBM (BPA); EDBM (BPC). Experiment conditions: current density of CED and EDBM stack, 50 mA cm2 ; electrolyte concentration, 0.3 mol dm3 ; sodium gluconate concentration 0.05 mol dm3 ; ow rate, 27 dm3 h1 .

(B PCE C) D -E D BM (B PCE C) D -E D BM (B PA )

(B P

(B P

(B P

-A )

-C )

-C )

D -E D BM

CE

CE

D -E D BM

ED BM

ED BM

300 Table 2 Estimation of process cost.

Y. Wang et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 365 (2010) 294301

EDBM (BPC) Repeating units Current density (mA cm2 ) Experiment time (min) Effective membrane area (cm2 ) Na2 SO4 concentration (mol dm3 ) Fluid ow speed (dm3 h1 ) NaGlu concentration (mol dm3 ) HGlu concentration (mol dm3 ) Current efciency (%) Energy consumption (kWh kg1 ) Process capacity (kg year1 ) Electricity charge ($ kg1 ) Energy cost for HGlu ($ kg1 ) Energy cost for the peripheral equipment ($ kg1 ) Total energy cost ($ kg1 ) Membrane life and amortization of the peripheral equipment (year) Monopolar membrane price ($ m2 ) Bipolar membrane price ($ m2 ) Membrane cost ($) Stack cost ($) Peripheral equipment cost ($) Total investment cost ($) Amortization ($ year1 ) Interest ($ year1 ) Maintenance ($ year1 ) Total xed cost ($ year1 ) Total xed cost ($ kg1 ) Total process cost ($ kg1 ) 1 50 120 7.07 0.3 27 0.05 0.040 94.85 2.58 16.79 0.1 0.26 0.01 0.27 3 135 1350 1.05 1.57 2.36 3.94 1.31 0.31 0.39 2.02 0.12 0.39

CEDEDBM (BPA) 1 50 120 7.07 0.3 27 0.05 0.048 91.80 2.88 20.34 0.1 0.29 0.01 0.30 3 135 1350 1.24 1.86 2.79 4.65 1.55 0.37 0.47 2.39 0.12 0.42

CEDEDBM (BPC) 1 50 120 7.07 0.3 27 0.05 0.068 131.04 2.15 28.98 0.1 0.22 0.01 0.23 3 135 1350 1.24 1.86 2.79 4.65 1.55 0.37 0.47 2.39 0.08 0.31

single EDBM (BPC) process, as the total energy consumption is much higher. Besides, the current efciency of CEDEDBM (BPA) integration process is even lower than the single EDBM (BPC) process. The low efciency of CEDEDBM (BPA) process can be explained by its particular stack conguration. In the CEDEDBM (BPA) integration process, the migration of Glu through anion exchange membrane is much more difcult than Na+ through cation exchange membrane because the hydrate radii of gluconate ion is much larger than that of sodium ion. In addition, the cathode reactions in the EDBM stack generated OH- , which not only competes with Glu to go through anion exchange membrane but also neutralize the H+ generated from BP membrane. These negative effects account for the high energy consumption and low current efciency of the CEDEDBM (BPA) integration process. While in the case of CEDEDBM (BPC) integration process, the apparent current efciency is higher than the BPC conguration with less energy consumption as well as with concentrated gluconate besides. The process cost is calculated by following the procedure as reported in the literature [15], and the results are listed in Table 2. For CEDEDBM (BPC) integration conguration, the total process cost is estimated to be 0.31$ kg1 , less than the other two congurations (0.39$ kg1 and 0.42$ kg1 , respectively). The process cost of CEDEDBM (BPA) integration conguration is higher than that of a single EDBM (BPC) conguration, indicating its synergistic effect is limited. 4. Conclusions

istics. As proven by the experiments results, the CEDEDBM (BPC) conguration is a cost-effective means to produce gluconic acid from the viewpoint of energy consumption and current efciency. The electrode reactions and concentrating of salt in the CED stack, which leading to an apparent current efciency higher than 100% and low energy consumption, are conducive to an EDBM process. The process cost of CEDEDBM (BPC) integration conguration is estimated to be 0.31$ kg1 , less than another integration conguration CEDEDBM (BPA) or a single EDBM (BPC) process. Obviously, the process coupling of CED and EDBM can achieve a synergistic effect, not only made the production cost-effective but also kept the operation of EDBM stable. Note that this work is a preliminary study. There is much more work to do before bringing the process coupling to industrialization, such as scale-up the experiment from the now one repeating unit, purication of gluconic acid from gluconate salt, etc. Acknowledgments This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 20636050), the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar, the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. KSCX2-YW-G-075-25) and Foundations of Educational Committee of Anhui Province (Nos. ZD200901, KJ2010A330 and KJ2008A69). The authors thank Dr. C.H. Huang for proofreading the manuscript. References

The integration of conventional electrodialysis (CED) and electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) provides an effective way to produce gluconic acid (HGlu) from sodium gluconate (NaGlu). During the operations, both integration cell conguration such as CEDEDBM (BPC) and CEDEDBM (BPA) as well as operation parameters such as current density of CED stack and electrolyte concentration play an important role on the integration character-

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