in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).Two types of ionic modification approaches (i.e., sulfonation and triethylamination) were applied with the aid of dual-layer hollow fiber technology in this work to fine tune the pore size and pore size distribution, introduce the electrostatic interaction, and reduce membrane fouling for long-term high-performance protein separation. A binary protein mixture comprising bovine serum albumin (BSA) and hemoglobin (Hb) was separated in this work. The sulfonated fiber exhibits an improved BSA/Hb separation factor at pH ¼ 6.8 compared with as-spun fibers but at the expense of BSA sieving coefficient. On the other hand, the triethylaminated fiber reveals the best and most durable separation performance at pH ¼ 4.8. Its BSA/Hb separation factor is maintained above 80 for 4 days and maximum BSA sieving coefficient reaches 33%. Therefore, this study documents that an intelligent combination of both size-exclusion and electrostatic interaction can synergistically enhance protein separation performance in both purity and concentration.
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