The cashew crop is an important agro-economic activity in many equatorial areas, although less than 10%
of the cashew apple production is exploited industrially. This work focuses on two aspects: obtaining
food-grade syrups from cashew apple juice and studying fixed bed adsorption dynamics to separate fructose
from glucose. Syrups obtained by concentrating clarified cashew apple juice under vacuum showed
similar characteristics to a reference food-grade syrup, with a higher content in fructose, which may contribute
to a higher sweetening power with less caloric intake. Adsorption equilibrium studies were performed
with synthetic solutions of fructose and glucose by frontal analysis under the concentration range
found in the syrups (10–120 g/L) at 30, 40 and 60 C, using the cation exchange resin Dowex MTO 99Ca.
Fructose was more strongly adsorbed than glucose, with measured selectivities ranging from 1.50 to 2.25.
Resistance to mass transfer was significant and thought to be due to resin crosslinkage. Glucose and fructose
breakthrough curves using cashew apple syrup as feed were practically identical to those measured
with synthetic solutions, which leads us to believe that high-fructose syrups may be readily obtained by
using current continuous chromatographic units, such as SMB.