Separation of polyunsaturated fatty acid esters by flowing liquid membrane with porous partition

A laboratory-constructed flowing liquid membrane apparatus with porous partition (FLM) was applied to the separation of such polyunsaturated fatty acid esters (PUFA-Ets) as eicosapentaenoic acid ethylester (EPA-Et) and docosahexaenoic acid ethylester (DHA-Et) at 293 K. The hydrophilic porous membrane was used as a partition, and 2 M AgNO3 aqueous solution was used as a membrane liquid. By using dodecane as a feed diluent and m-xylene as a recovery solution, PUFA-Ets were successfully separated from mixture of fatty acid esters. The recovery fraction of PUFA-Ets and the separation degree between DHA-Et and EPA-Et were investigated; it increases with the velocity of membrane liquid and the flow path length in the module, while it decreased with the velocity of feed and recovery solution. The recovery fraction of DHA-Et reachs 60% with only 8 s-retention time by the continuous operation. The concentrations of the DHA-Et at the outlet of the module were simulated based on the mass transfer model, which gave nearly 85% recovery fraction with 30 s-retention time. These results show that a stable operation, a high recovery and a high throughput are realized by the FLM.