5 Electro-membrane separations in biotechnology

Abstract

Membrane processes are of crucial importance for downstream processing in biotechnology. This is due to their selectivity and the mild operating conditions, enabling to extract target products without damages caused by overheating and chemical agents. Besides the most spread membrane processes like ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, electrodialysis is very important for removal and extraction of electrically charged products, i. e. anions of organic acids, some antibiotics, etc. The electrodialysis process can be organized in batch or continuous mode. On the other hand, in the electro-crossflow filtration, the transport of target solutes across the membrane is guided by two main driving forces, the transmembrane pressure and the electric potential. This combination enables various possibilities for more selective and efficient downstream processing in biotechnology. This chapter provides a brief overview of recent achievements of electrodialysis in selected bioproducts separations and recovery. A special focus, including original experimental data, is then given to electro-filtration, which is a powerful tool creating new opportunities for performing separations on the basis of both electric charge and particle size differences.

Ionic-liquid-based approaches to improve biopharmaceuticals downstream processing and formulation

“…Despite the high selectivity, high resolution and high purity of the product, chromatography also exhibits some limitations, namely low associated throughputs, low proteolytic and chemical stabilities when biological ligands are used, high scale pressure drops, time-consuming nature, and high costs, which hinder the production of biopharmaceuticals at low cost ( Rosa et al, 2010 ; Jozala et al, 2016 ; Castro et al, 2019 ; Castro et al, 2020 ). To surpass these limitations, research has focused on the development of chromatographic ligands with enhanced selectivity, robustness, and reproducibility ( Martins et al, 2014 ), as well as on non-chromatographic strategies, such as affinity precipitation ( Hoffman et al, 2001 ; Roque et al, 2007 ), preparative electrophoresis ( Thomas et al, 2002 ), high-performance tangential flow filtration ( Lazarova et al, 2001 ), membrane filtration ( Castilho et al, 2002 ), precipitation ( dos Santos et al, 2017 ), aqueous biphasic systems ( Zijlstra et al, 1998 ; Azevedo et al, 2009 ), non-chromatographic magnetic separation ( Karl and Schwa, 2005 ), high-gradient magnetic separation ( Akgo et al, 2004 ; Gomes et al, 2018 ), and crystallization ( dos Santos et al, 2017 ). Nevertheless, the progress made in this field is still far from that required, and downstream processing continues to account for the most expensive part of biomanufacturing ( Azevedo et al, 2009 ).…”