Downstream filtration

O There are several unit operations upstream and downstream filtration, such as reaction and thermal drying, are required by the process flow-scheme O There is a risk of environmental hazard from toxic, flammable or volatile cakes... 

Foam inhibitors are often expensive and may adversely eiffect products or downstream equipment. Downstream filtration is often needed to remove them (373). 

The advantage of single-pass over cross-flow filtration is that it is an easier system to operate and can be cost effective, particularly if the product to be filtered is expensive, because very tittle of the initial fluid is lost during filtration. However, because the flow pattern of the fluid is directly through the filter, filter life maybe too short for the fluid being filtered. The minimum flow rate needed downstream of the filter must also be considered, especially when there are time constraints to the process. In some situations it may be more advantageous to use a cross-flow system where higher flow rates may be easier to obtain. 

The so-called hyperbar vacuum filtration is a combination of vacuum and pressure filtration in a pull—push arrangement, whereby a vacuum pump of a fan generates vacuum downstream of the filter medium, while a compressor maintains higher-than-atmospheric pressure upstream. If, for example, the vacuum produced is 80 kPa, ie, absolute pressure of 20 kPa, and the absolute pressure before the filter is 150 kPa, the total pressure drop of 130 kPa is created across the filter medium. This is a new idea in principle but in practice requires three primary movers a Hquid pump to pump in the suspension, a vacuum pump to produce the vacuum, and a compressor to supply the compressed air. The cost of having to provide, install, and maintain one additional primary mover has deterred the development of hyperbar vacuum filtration only Andrit2 in Austria offers a system commercially. 

Cake Filters Filters that accumulate appreciable visible quantities of solids on the surface of a filter medium are called cake filters. The slurry feed may have a solids concentration from about 1 percent to greater than 40 percent. The filter medium on which the cake forms is relatively open to minimize flow resistance, since once the cake forms, it becomes the effective filter medium. The initial filtrate therefore may contain unacceptable sohds concentration until the cake is formed. This situation may be made tolerable by recycling the filtrate until acceptable clarity is obtained or by using a downstream polishing filter (clarifying type). 

In the development of new products, optimization of the fermentation medium for titer only often ignores the consequences of the medium properties on subsequent downstream processing steps such as filtration and chromatography. It is imperative, therefore, that there be effective communication and understanding between workers on the upstream and downstream phases of the produc t development if rational trade-offs are to be made to ensure overall optimahty of the process. One example is to make the conscious decision, in collaboration with those responsible for the downstream operations, whether to produce a protein in an unfolded form or in its native folded form the purification of the aggregated unfolded proteins is simpler than that of the native protein, but the refolding process itself to obtain the product in its final form may lack scalabihty. 

Pressure build-up Provide adequate venting and dust filtration on downstream of receiving vessel vent mill (risk of com-, Where liquefied gas (nitrogen or CO9 ) is used ponent failure, ensure adequate vent sizing and limit particularly in gas liquefied gas feed-rate to mill conveying systems). Internal pressure may also force product out of the mill. CCPS G-11 CCPS G-22 CCPS G-23 CCPS G-29... 

In applying these general criteria, one should focus on the intended application. In wastewater treatment applications, filtration can be applied at various stages. It can be applied as a pretreatment method, in which case the objective is often to remove coarse, gritty materials from the waste-stream. This is a preconditioning step for waste waters which will undergo further chemical and physical treatment downstream. 

Filtration may also serve as the preparatory step for the operation following it. The latter stages may be drying or incineration of solids, concentration or direct use of the filtrate. Filtration equipment must be selected on the basis of their ability to deliver the best feed material to the next step. Dry, thin, porous, flaky cakes are best suited for drying where grinding operations are not employed. In such cases, the cake will not ball up, and quick drying can be achieved. A clear, concentrated filtrate often aids downstream treatment, whereby the filter can be operated to increase the efficiency of the downstream equipment without affecting its own efficiency. 

Downstream side The side of a product stream that has already passed through a given filter system portion located after the filtration unit. 

The economics of an immobilised cell process depend on the lifetime of the microorganism and a continued level of clean product delivered by the fixed cells. It is important to eliminate the free cells from the downstream product without the use of any units such as centrifuge or filtration processes. Since the cells are retained in the ICR, the activity of intracellular enzymes may play a major role. It is assumed that the deactivation of the enzyme at constant temperature follows a first-order equation as shown below 17... 

At harvest, the benzylpenicilhn is in solution extracellularly, together with a range of other metabolites and medium constituents. The first step in downstream processing is to remove the cells by filtration or centrifugation. This stage is carried out under conditions that avoid contamination with (3-lactamase-producing microorganisms which could lead to serious or total loss of product. 

Downstream Processing Microfiltration plays a significant role in downstream processing of fermentation products in the pharmaceutical and bioprocessing industry. Examples are clarification of fermentation broths, sterile filtration, cell recycle in continuous fermentation, harvesting mammahan cells, cell washing, mycelia recovery, lysate recovery, enzyme purification, vaccines, and so forth. 

Figure 4.14 Chemical adducts for by-product removal synthesis of isopropyl-cis-Ag-hexadecanoate from isopropylpalmitate applying a repetitive batch process using a sequence of stirred-tank reactor, extraction module, filtration step and chromatographic downstream processing...

In FBs, tars are generated, but these can be partially decomposed to gas using in situ catalysts such as dolomite70 and treated olivine sand.46 The tars can further be cracked or reformed downstream in separate beds yielding additional syngas, and thus, hydrogen (see Section 6.3.4). A new development is the combination of ceramic gas filtration and catalytic tar cracking see Heidenreich and Nacken.71... 

The pilot-scale SBCR unit with cross-flow filtration module is schematically represented in Figure 15.5. The SBCR has a 5.08 cm diameter and 2 m height with an effective reactor volume of 3.7 L. The synthesis gas passes continuously through the reactor and is distributed by a sparger near the bottom of the reactor vessel. The product gas and slurry exit at the top of the reactor and pass through an overhead gas/liquid separator, where the slurry is disengaged from the gas phase. Vapor products and unreacted syngas exit the gas/liquid separator and enter a warm trap (373 K) followed by a cold trap (273 K). A dry flow meter downstream of the cold trap measures the exit gas flow rate. 

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