Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Standard separation and recovery techniques can be quite expensive, especially when the purity
requirement of the protein or enzyme is high. In fact, the cost of protein recovery and
purification may be the detemlining factor in whether a product is economically viable (1)..
Targeting better protein recovery and purification techniques may result in a significant
reduction in processing costs. Foam ftactionation, an adsorptive-bubble separation method, has
been shown to be a feasible technique for the separation and/or concentration of proteins and
enzymes (2), including recombinant pharmaceutical proteins (3) and enzymes such as cellulase
(4). Several researchers have suggested that bubble size and liquid hold-up are the two factors,
which ultimately control the overall performance of the column (4).
The proposed project is aimed at developing an optical radiation depolarization technique for online
bubble size analysis for foam fractionation, in order to maximize protein recovery
efficiency. The technique is based on changes in the angular and radial profiles of reflected and
transmitted light by a foam subjected to a collimated, polarized light beam (5). A hybrid Monte
Carlo/Ray- Tracing method can be used to simulate the depolarization of radiation by the
bubbles. The bubble size distribution can be determined by best fitting experimentally
determined vertical and horizontal polarization components of both radial and angular profiles of
reflection and transmission. In addition to bubble size analysis, the proposed technique can also
determine the liquid hold-up (i.e., the liquid thickness between the bubbles). The proposed
emerging idea proposal focuses on preliminary experiments necessary to show that 1) polarized
light can be utilized to monitor bubble size and liquid hold-up and 2) that changes in these two
parameters can be correlated to changes in the performance of a foarn fractionation column.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 7/1/03 → 9/30/04 |
Funding
- KY Science and Technology Co Inc: $15,000.00
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