Desalination 148 (2002) 213–220 Evaluation of flat sheet and hollow fiber supported liquid membranes for fructose pertraction from a mixture of sugars M. Di Luccio a* , B.D. Smith b , T. Kida b , T.L.M. Alves c , C.P. Borges c a Department of Food Engineering, URI-Campus de Erechim, Erechim, RS, 99700-000, Brazil Fax: +55-54-5209090, email: diluccio@uricer.edu.br b Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA c Chemical Engineering Program, COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 21945-970, Brazil Received 5 February 2002; accepted 19 February 2002 Abstract This work investigates the use of supported liquid membranes (SLM) in the pertraction of fructose from a mixture of sugars contained in a fermentation broth. Membranes consisted in a porous polypropylene support impregnated with different kinds of carriers using 2-nitrophenyl octyl ether as solvent. Transport through flat sheet and hollow-fiber membranes was studied as a function of carrier and feed concentration. The results show that a boronic acid derivative yields the highest fructose selectivity and the hollow fiber supported liquid membrane (HFSLM) is more stable than the flat sheet system, also yielding higher fructose selectivities using lower carrier concentration. The HFSLM using a boronic acid as carrier was able to remove fructose selectively from a fermentation broth. Simulations of fructose removal from a fermentation broth were carried out using the experimental results obtained in this work. The results show that fructose removal from the fermentation broth can reduce microorganism inhibition and increase the system performance, although, further improvement in membrane stability and fluxes are still necessary. Keywords: Fructose extraction; Supported liquid membranes; Fermentation 1. Introduction Byproducts of high value have been proposed as an alternative to increase ethanol production profitability [1]. Fructose may be *Corresponding author Presented at the International Congress on Membranes and Membrane Processes (ICOM), Toulouse, France, July 7–12, 2002 0011-9164/02/$– See front matter  2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved obtained as a byproduct of the selective fermentation of a mixture of glucose and fructose, which may result from the hydrolysis of sugar cane syrup. In such fermentation, glucose is converted to ethanol by a mutant Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain and fructose remains in the fermentation broth [2].