Development of an high-performance liquid chromatographic simulated moving bed separation from an industrial perspective

A binary test mixture consisting of cyclopentanone and cycloheptanone is used for the performance evaluation of a pilot-scale simulated moving bed unit. The involved adsorption equilibria and the kinetic behavior are discussed in detail. The results of the test runs are evaluated using the recently introduced "triangle theory" which allows to account for the overload conditions prevailing under preparative chromatographic conditions and to select optimal operating conditions. Under optimized conditions the separation of 735 g test mixture/kg stationary phase per day with purities >99.9% for extract and raffinate stream has been achieved.