Separation of simulated industrial food products, by method of adsorption,
has been studied. A thermodynamic approach has been applied to study the liquid
adsorption where benzene and cyclohexane have been used to simulate edible oils
in a system that employs silica gel as the adsorbent. Different models suggested
in the literature have been tested with experimental data in order to
characterize properties of the system, such as the tendency to ideality, for
both adsorbed and bulk liquid phases. The methods of determining thermodynamic
properties such as free energy of adsorption, adsorption capacity and activity
coefficients in the adsorbed phase have been studied.
It was observed that a model based on the assumption that adsorbed phase, but
not liquid phase, is ideal gave a good for that may suffice for engineering
design of liquid adsorption systems that may be applied in food processing, such
as decolourising crude sugar syrup, recovery of polypeptides and extraction of
flavouring.
