In-situ investigation of sucrose hydrolysis - Successful link between design of experiment, RC1 and ReactIR system

Abstract

The main purpose of this work was combining the modern laboratory equipment (RC1 reaction calorimeter and ReactIR™iC10 reaction analysis system) and the concept of the Taguchi's design of experiment to determine the relative influence of important process parameters affecting the sucrose hydrolysis. The reaction was catalyzed by strong acidic cation-exchange resin Amberlite IR-120 in H+ form. Four process parameters, including reaction temperature (θ), sucrose mass concentration (γS), catalyst mass concentration (γC) and the rotational frequency of the stirrer (fm) at four levels were considered in this study. Relative contributions of the proposed influencing process parameters on hydrolysis time were estimated by analysis of the variance (ANOVA). The results showed that θ had a substantial effect on the reaction time (78,3 %), the f m and γC had a smaller ones (7,9 % and 6,4 %, respectively), meanwhile the remain fraction to 100 % represents error (7,4 %). The optimum conditions, where the time required for complete sucrose hydrolysis would be the shortest, are: θ = 79°C, γC = 180 g/L, γS = 50 g/L and fm = 180 min-1. Although the presented results refer strictly to the selected case study and are specific within the observed ranges of selected process parameters, the proposed procedure shows their potential usage in general process design.