Separation of bio-products by liquid-liquid extraction

Solvent extraction one of the oldest approaches of separation known, remains one of the most well-known methods operating on an industrial scale. With the availability of variety of solvents as well as commercial equipment, liquid-liquid extractions finds applications in fields like chemicals and bio-products, food, polymer, pharmaceutical industry etc. Liquid-liquid extraction process is particularly suitable for biorefinery process (through conversion using microorganisms), featuring mild operational conditions and ease of control of process. The principles, types, equipment and applications of liquid-liquid extraction for bioproducts are discussed. Currently various intensification techniques are being applied in the field of liquid-liquid extraction for improving the process efficiency like hybrid processes, reactive extraction, use of ionic liquids etc, which are gaining importance due to the cost associated with the downstream processing of the fermentation products (20-50% of total production cost).