Evaluation of hydrodynamic parameters of fluidized bed adsorption on purification of nano-bioproducts

The biotechnology industry has recently been demanding nanoparticulate products (20-200 nm) such as viruses, plas-mids, virus-like particles and drug delivery assemblies. Fluid-ized bed/expanded bed adsorption (EBA) is a technique that can be employed for nanoparticulate purification providing practical advantages such as the potential for direct process integration as has been seen with protein products. In the present work, the hydrodynamic behaviour of an expanded bed adsorption column for obtaining the optimal conditions of bovine serum albumin (BSA) nanoparticle recovery on streamline DEAE was studied. Residence time distribution (RTD) analysis was used to acquire hydrodynamic information from changes bed expansion, column diameter and settled bed height. Fluidization behaviour was predicted from the Richardson-Zaki correlation, with experimentally determined values of the expansion index. RTD showed axial dispersion increases with bed height as well as linear velocity. However, the effect of expansion degree of the bed on bovine serum albumin (BSA) nanoparticle purification was studied and the yield of recovery of BSA nanoparticle in optimal condition was 80.71%. Hydrodynamic behaviour of expanded bed adsorption and its potential for the purification and recovery of nanoparticle bioproducts is strongly discussed.