Fruit juice deacification

Cranberry juice shows a natural acidity, once ripe, so it is hardly drinkable as it is. Today cranberries preparations are commonly sweetened with added sugar. SEPROSYS has developed a solution to lower the acidity without any addition of sweeteners while limiting losses of molecules of interest for the human health as flavonoids and keeping the properties of cranberry juice.

Furthermore,this method is suitable for any acidic fruit juice requiring deacidification without addition of sugar or chemicals. This innovative method, carried out on an anion exchange resin, is easy to set up, cost effective and does not alter compounds of interest in the treated fruit juice.

Metals separation

Value added metals can be recovered by recycling them from ores or materials containing metals. Different recovery processes have been developed but they are generally specific for each metal. Today, the separation, at least, of two metals (ins: copper and silver or lead and silver) is not always simple, efficient, affordable and productive.

To address this challenge, Seprosys has studied and developed an ion exchange and chromatographic process to separate, at least, 2 metals (one of each is a cationic metal). Metal salts are dissolved in an acidic solution and separated by ion exchange chromatography on a cationic resin under H+ form with the previously used acid solution as eluent.

Our work is specifically focused on the separation of silver and lead, lanthanum and yttrium or silver and copper.

• This method is easy to set up and enable to recover highly purified metals - over 99% purity in continuous stream - and does not involve any organic solvent ;
• This method has been patented.

Tobacco extract treatment

Among all toxic compounds in tobacco smoke, research has identified different kind of molecules produced by the degradation of proteins and polyphenols. In order to reduce the harmfulness of this tobacco smoke, different methods, as floculation or absorption, have been tested without achieving acceptable yields.

SEPROSYS has developed a process to reduce proteins and polyphenols in a tobacco extract by means of ultrafiltration. Thanks to this method, close to 100% of RuBisCo (the major protein of tobacco leaves) and chlorogenic acid (major polyphenol) are eliminated from a tobacco extract.

Carboxylic acids separation

Some fermentation processes produce aqueous solutions containing different type of sugars and carboxylic acids. Separation of those carboxylic acids one another may represent a valuable process.

In this respect, SEPROSYS has developed a process for the separation of carboxylic acids in a solution comprising mono-, di-and tri-carboxylic acids as well as, at least, one sugar (e.g. Glucose). This process consists in injecting the aqueous solution on resin particles bed covalently bonded with quaternary ammonium groups.

Fish-farming water treatment

Fish farming often require the use of treatments on fishes, for example, to keep under control parasitic infections. The addition of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) in feeds or water is commonly used. However, part of those API may remain in waters having harmful effects on others living organisms. To reply to this problematic Seprosys has developed and patented a filtration method to reduce the concentration of API in water.

Cane sugar vinasses recovery

Sucrose fermentation, extracted from cane sugar, is a major process for ethanol production. During cane sugar processing, a aqueous liquid by-product - containing salts and organic compounds - called vinasses, is produced. Current elimination methods consist in treating those vinasses as waste or use them as fertilizer bringing questions on soil and/or underground waters safety.

In order to valorize those by-products, SEPROSYS has developed a process focusing on the extraction of valuable compounds from cane sugar vinasses as inositols and/or policosanols. Thus, this process involves filtration methods, ion exclusion chromatography and affinity chromatography.

Extraction of policosanols from cane sugar

SEPROSYS has developed a method to extract policosanols from concentrated cane sugar vinasses with organic compound is greater than or equal to 35 g/l. This process involves ion exclusion chromatography, concentartion by microfiltration and affinity chromatography.