Ultrafiltration design considerations

The considerations above have been utilized by various manufacturers in designing efficient ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis equipment. 

Ole Jentoft Olsen (DSS Danish Separation Systems) presented a large-scale industrial example on using ultrafiltration for the production of antibiotics. Within 15 hr, a volume of 100 metric tons of biomass was processed. The design of membrane module, operational conditions, and the overall plant were presented, along with detailed cost considerations for this process. 

Among the most energy-intensive processes in the chemical industry, the purification and separation processes stand out, whether they are carried out through distillation, re-crystallization, or ultrafiltration. By designing a process that minimizes the need for separations of this kind, one also ensures that the energy requirements (thermal, electric, or others) will decrease considerably. 

Equipment used to produce biotech products should be qualified for design, installation, operation, and performance [15]. The aging and continued performance of re-used process materials such as column resins is an important consideration during the validation of a biotech process. Demonstration of microbial control during processing is also a critical component of process validation, particularly in difficult to clean equipment such as alBnity columns or ultrafiltration membranes. Finally, consistent and reasonable step yield of individual unit operations can be verified during consistency and commercial product manufacturing. 

The success of the Leveque and Dittus-Boelter relationships in indicating the variation (power dependence) of ultrafiltrate flux with channel geometry and fluid velocity for macromolecular solutions is gratifying. The more crucial test of the theory, of considerable interest to the design engineer, is whether these relationships can be used to calculate quantitatively the ultrafiltrate flux knowing the channel geometry, fluid velocities and solute characteristics. 

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