High viscosity industrial chromatography for mild food fractionation

Abstract

Further, two different kinds of chromatography can be distinguished by their aim, namely analytical and preparative chromatography. The aim of analytical chromatography is to identify and quantify the contents of a sample. Small volumes are used and sample recovery is not necessary, analytes are sometimes modified, denatured, or labelled and discarded as waste after detection [2]. The aim of preparative chromatography is to collect the eluting sample fractions for further use, while maintaining their functionality. Therefore target components are purified and collected, with focus on fast recovery, high productivity, and desired purity. Chromatography within the food industryExamples of current use of chromatography within the food industry are given in Table 1.1. The chromatographic systems process large product streams. A few examples are production of various whey protein isolate products in a continuous simulated moving bed system SMB with a capacity of over 1 million liters of cheese whey per day [18]. A different type of chromatographic system, where the stationary phase is not packed but rather sedimenting down against the upwards flowing feed stream, expanded bed adsorption chromatography, is used for production of lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, and immunoglobulins from cheese whey, processing more than 200,000 L of cheese whey per day [18]. In beet sugar processing, sucrose is recovered from molasses by SMB systems with a capacity of over 600 t per day (with 80% dry matter) [19].In the previous chapters experiments were done with single columns using model solutions with viscosifier agents to increase the viscosity. In chapter 5 a multicolumn separation process SMB is used to obtain a γaminobutyric acid enriched fraction from tomato serum. This separation is based on ion-exclusion chromatography IEC. A mathematical model of the process is validated and used to determine the conditions with the highest productivity.The thesis concludes with a general discussion in chapter 6 on the results in the previous chapters. Further addressed are increasing temperature, as a means to work with concentrated streams while minimizing the viscosity increase, and the influence of a change in peak shape on the separation performance at elevated Chapter 1 17.