Alginates are polysaccharides which are naturally present in the cell wall of brown algae and extracted because of their rheological properties. The alginate industry uses an extraction protocol, which central step, the carbonatation, is conducted in batch reactors. It is a high water, reagent and time demanding process. The main objective of this thesis is to optimize the alginate extraction process. A study of the existing process, focused on carbonatation step, enabled to highlight points which could be enhanced to optimize the extraction yield and the quality of extracted alginates. Stirring intensity and algae pieces size have been identified as parameters having an influence on the carbonatation reaction kinetics. A specific analysis on medullar and... |