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Corn wet-milling plant, Decatur, Illinois, USA

High-fructose corn syrup: SMB glucose/fructose separation — a PENG-ROBINSON process flowsheet

The single largest-volume industrial SMB in the world — separating fructose from glucose to make 55-HFCS. A glucose/fructose isomerate (dilute in water eluent) feeds the native SMB unit op; on a Ca²⁺-form ion-exchange resin fructose is the more-retained sugar, so it reports to the extract (the sweetener product) while glucose leaves in the raffinate (recycled to the isomerase reactor in a real plant). Solved as the steady-state True Moving Bed equivalent — a purely isotherm-driven liquid separation, so the sugars need no vapor-liquid-equilibrium data.

Modeling assumptions & limitations

  1. 1TMB steady-state equivalent (not the transient port-switching process), ideal equilibrium stages, illustrative isotherm affinities capturing the real fructose > glucose retention order.

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FEED
Water
feed
eluent
extract
raff
SMB
Extract
Raffinate
What this showcases
  • Rigorous PENG-ROBINSON thermodynamics, solved by the same engine every simulation runs on.
  • 1 unit operations modeled: SMB.
  • Focus areas: SMB chromatography, HFCS, Sugar separation, Food processing.
Specification
Thermodynamics
PENG-ROBINSON
Components
fructose, glucose, water
Unit operations
SMB
Open in workspace

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Read the step-by-step guide
Python SDK

Reproduce this exact result from Python — the real client.get_example() → run_and_wait() path, not a mockup.

from flowsim.sdk import FlowSimClient

client = FlowSimClient()
example = client.get_example("hfcs-smb-separation")
sim = client.create_simulation(example["title"], example["flowsheet"])
result = client.run_and_wait(sim["id"])

print(result["status"])              # "converged"
streams = client.streams(sim["id"])

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