Application of electrodialysis technology on desalination of soybean oligosaccharides solution

Sweet slurry is the final byproduct in soybean sheet production. It is named sweet slurry because of its sweetness rendered by its high concentration of soybean oligosaccharides. Soybean oligosaccharides solution extracted from the sweet slurry contains high amount of salts, which is an major obstacle to the purity of the extract. Ion-exchange membrane (IEM) mediated electrodialysis (ED) desalination of the simulated soybean oligosaccharides solution was employed in this research for the desalination of a simulated soybean oligosaccharides solution and optimized process parameters were determined. The results showed that electrodialysis was feasible for desalination of the simulated suagr-salt solution with a salt removal efficiency of more than 96.07%. The optimal operating parameters under experimental working condition were 20 V applied voltage, 60 L/h flow rate and a dilution of 15 times. After the treatment the oligosaccharides retention was about 83.82%.