Hyaluronic acid (HA) dispersion obtained from the bacteria Streptococcus equi was concentrated by electrofiltration. In the conventional downstream processing of HA, extraction and precipitation lead to increase in environmental issues, structural changes, and time and energy related costs. Using electrofiltration as an alternative technology delivers solutions to these limitations. Experiments were conducted in order to test the applicability of electrofiltration to downstream processing of the negatively charged HA. The structural changes and molecular weight distributions, often a consequence of the employed separation method, were tested by analysis of the initial dispersions and final products. In comparison to the conventional filtration, concentration factors were increased up to almost four times without any detectable structural change in the final product.
Although microfluidic solvent extraction (mSX) is a recent field in separation, its application is still limited to single-channel microfluidic devices. However, the industrial application of microheat exchangers has already proven that parallelization of microchannels is an important tool to increase the specific device efficiency. Hence, in this study, a multichannel system for mSX is introduced. As a model process, D,L-5-phenylhydantoin was extracted from ethyl acetate into aqueous buffer. By means of different experimental setups, the potential and limitations of membrane-supported multichannel mSX were investigated. The reactor dimensions perpendicular to flow and transmembrane mass transport are the most challenging factors for the introduced device.
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