Electrodeionization (EDI) is an advanced ion-exchange technology that combines the advantages of ion-exchange and electrodialysis for commercial ultra-pure water production. Adapted from conventional EDI technology, the resin-wafer electrodeionization (RW-EDI) used a thermal-plastics as binder to immobilize the ion-exchange resins to enable the applications of EDI for bioprocessing and chemical purifications. Up to date, pilot-scale RW-EDI technology has been successfully demonstrated in several industrial test sites for biochemical purification, organics acids product separation from fermentation and volatile fatty acid capture from waste treatment facility. Using commercial ion-exchange membranes and resin beads, RW-EDI has overcome the common issue of membrane fouling by organics using an industrial practice of clean-in-place in these demonstrations. However, the challenges of membrane fouling and low permeability of high carbon-chain organic acids on the anionic-exchange membrane (AEM) become an inevitable issue to bioprocess the C5-C8 organic acids for high value biochemicals or the intermediates to produce aviation biofuel. To overcome these challenges, a new material synthesis, membrane-wafer-assembly (MWA), to replace current RW was developed. In a nutshell, the MWA material contains anionic ionomer and cationic ionomer thin-layer coatings on same ionomer-bound resin bead wafer. To use the WMA, we also re-engineered components used in conventional plate-and-frame configuration of EDI (and RW-EDI). The innovate WMA enables less membrane material and assembly time to build a WMA-EDI stack compered to current EDI stack. We have tested, side-by-side with RW-EDI, its separation performance on VFA and aromatic acids capture from aqueous. The thin film coating of anionic ionomer reduced the transport resistance while increase the organic salt uptake rate into the organic acid capture stream. The WMA-EDI stack was able to enhance the capture ratio of, aromatic acids, p-coumarate more than 50%. Due to the thin layer (~ 20 um) and homogenous phase of anionic-conductive ionomer coating on an ionomer bound resin wafer, the energy consumption of WMA-EDI was reduced 55%. The resin wafer provides mechanic strength necessary to sustain on the flow pressure. In this presentation we will discuss in details of the synthesis, stack design and performance of WMA-EDI to capture C2-C8 organic acids.

Enhanced Ion-conductive network in a hybrid electrochemical separations material for bioprocessing membrane-wafer-assembly material for organic acids capture

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