Developing and scaling up processes and equipment

How does ARD help companies scale up extraction and purification processes?

The market for plant extracts is booming. Thanks to plant fractionation, this eco-friendly alternative to chemical processes can produce a wide variety of fractions and innovative molecules which can then be used in the food industry, in biotechnology, and in green chemistry. To help companies that want to produce or use plant extracts, ARD has developed and uses extraction techniques that can be rolled out at industrial scale.

How ARD develops processes

ARD's plant fractionation and purification team works essentially on four main types of projects:

• The production of substrates to produce first- and second-generation ethanol
• Refining compounds from agri-industrial by-products used to synthesise intermediates in green chemistry
• The extraction of a fermentation must from substances produced by microorganisms,
• The isolation of natural substances intended for plant health products, the food industry, and cosmetics.

Scaling up processes thanks to ARD

ARD is attentive to its customers' needs and is capable of implementing optimal operating conditions and defining the technical recommendations for producing the desired plant extracts and molecules. From the laboratory to full-scale production trials, its technical expertise and equipment allow it to make pre-production runs for sampling and demonstrations. All these stages enable project sponsors to test their processes at different scales and prove their viability in particular thanks to ARD's technical and economical viability analysis.

ARD's fractionation and purification equipment

Extraction processes feature a certain number of unit operations, that require various different types of equipment and extraction techniques.
As well as processing the plant itself (in the case of whole plants) there can be a succession of different extraction methods using enzymes, for example, then different separation techniques before purification (filtration, distillation, and centrifugal separation) that results in a liquid extract.
ARD's team also fully masters the pilot/demonstration scale for so-called downstream processing (DSP) equipment, which is used to purify both plant extracts and molecules from fermentation must, a crucial step in biotechnological processes before scaling up to commercial operations.
In designing bespoke production processes, ARD enables project sponsors to limit their investment while reducing their products' time to market.