Salts are by-products in the 1,3-propanediol fermentation broth. The separation technique for 1,3-propanediol generally requires desalting before putting into operation. Previous studies on the downstream processing of biologically produced 1,3-propanediol were mainly focused on the removal of these salts, rather than the recovery of these salts. In this paper, a whole recovery process of salts in the actual fermentation broth was discussed. First, batch crystallization was achieved by analyzing the characteristics of this system. Then the process of crystallization was optimized with uniform design. Our studies indicated that batch crystallization can effectively recover sodium succinate from actual 1,3-propanediol fermentation broth. The final purities and overall yield of sodium succinate and sodium sulfate were 98.4%, 99.1% and 64.1%, 72.3% under the optimum conditions, respectively. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.