Ultrafiltration staging

At the end of 24 hours of continuous process the system was shut down. The knowledge of flowed buffer volumes and of the optical densities inside and downstream each ultrafiltration stage allowed to estimate product distribution (see appendix for mass-balance equations and the calculation procedure). The content of each cell was recovered and ffeeze-dried in order to be stored and used for subsequent kinetic experiments. A schematic flow-sheet of the whole procedure is illustrated in figure 1. 

The selection of the most suitable enzyme for a certain purpose mainly depends on its biocatalytic characteristics. Once a correct choice has been made, it is important to minimize the expenses associated with the enzyme use, as the economic feasibility of enzymatic processes is likely to depend on the cost of the enzyme production. In this context, several authors showed that the performance of various peroxidase processes was independent of enzyme purity [1,2], even suggesting that the crude enzyme was protected from inactivation [3, 4]. Microfiltration and subsequent ultrafiltration stages are sufficient to separate biomass and concentrate the enzyme for an economically viable operation [2, 5]. 

The limiting oil-concentration for the first stage, microfiltration, is determined by the tolerable concentration of oil in the recycled product. Since the oil retention capacity of the ultrafiltration stage is independent of feed concentration, the final concentration of the retentate is solely determined by the phase inversion "oil/water -> water/oil". At this concentration, the overall water recovery of the process is above 97.5%. However, the retentate of the process still contains too much water if incineration or refining is considered. Therefore, an evaporation step must be included in the process. Almost certainly evaporation will not be economical for the small capacities indicated in Figure 6.34 and a central evaporation station for the tentates from several production lines should be considered. 

The simplest ultrafiltration is the stirred cell, a batch operation. The most compex is a continuous stages-in-series operation incorporating diafiltration. Industrial practice incorporates the full gamut of complexity. 

Cell cultures provide infeeted fluids that eontain little debris and can generally be satisfactorily clarified by filtration. Beeause most viral vaccines made fiom cell cultures consist of live attenuated vims, there is no inaetivation stage in their manufacture. There are, however, two important exeeptions inaetivated poliomyelitis vims vaccine is inactivated with dilute formalin or /3-propiolaotone and rabies vaccine is inactivated with /3-propiolactone. The preparation of these inaetivated vaccines also involves a concentration stage, by adsorption and elution of the vims in the case of poliomyelitis vaccine and by ultrafiltration in the case of rabies vaceine. When processing is complete the bulk materials may be stored until needed for blending into final vaccine. Because of the lability of many vimses, however, it is necessary to store most purified materials at temperatures of-70°C. 

Fig. 5-20. Enantiomer separation in a cascaded ultrafiltration (UF) system of 60 stages [77]... 

Koyuncu et al. [56] presented pilot-scale studies on the treatment of pulp and paper mill effluents using two-stage membrane filtrations, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis [56]. The combination of UF and RO resulted in very high removals of COD, color, and conductivity from the effluents. At the end of a single pass with seawater membrane, the initial COD, color and conductivity values were reduced to 10-20 mg/L, 0-100 PCCU (platinum cobalt color units) and 200-300 ps/cm, respectively. Nearly complete color removals were achieved in the RO experiments with seawater membranes. 

Sierka, R.A. Cooper, S.P. Pagoria, P.S. Ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis treatment of an acid stage wastewater. Water Sci. Technol. 1997, 35 (2-5), 155-161. 

Figure 6.26 Flow schematic of a three-stage feed-and-bleed ultrafiltration system used to recover poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) sizing agents used in the production of cotton/synthetic blend fabrics [28]...

Burba, R, Aster, B.,Nifant eva,T.,Shkinev, V., and Spivakov, B. Y. (1998). Membrane filtration studies of aquatic humic substances and their metal species A concise overview. Part 1. Analytical fractionation by means of sequential-stage ultrafiltration. Talanta 45, 977-988. 

Burba, P., Shkinev, V and Spivakov, B.Ya. (1995) On-line fractionation and characterization of aquatic humic substances by means of sequential-stage ultrafiltration. Fresenius J. Anal. Chem., 351, 74-82. 

FIGURE 32 A nine-stage ultrafiltration plant concentrating whole milk from 8 to 40% total solids for cheesemaking. (APV Crepeco Inc.)... 

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