Development of a drainage enhancement device for the continuous foam fractionation of proteins

摘要

Foam fractionation has been widely used in ore flotation and waste water treatment. Recently, the separation and concentration of proteins by this method has been frequently studied on the basis of its possible applicability to food and biochemical industries. Different approaches have been proposed to improve the performance of foam separation in terms of enrichment and recovery for some certain surfactant solutions. However, performance may be limited in the case of biologically active compounds such as bacteriocins and enzymes, due reasons such as the Langmiur fashion of adsorption isotherm and damage to the target molecular caused by the hash environment of the gas-liquid interface. In the present study, a closer-plate and foam riser combination was applied to enhance the drainage of the interstitial liquid in the foam, thus to increase the protein concentration in the fomate. It was observed that the liquid fraction of the foam leaving the top of the column was significantly reduced by the newly developed equipment, leading to a higher enrichment of the out-flow stream. The mechanism of this device and the process was primarily explained by invoking recent work on pneumatic foams. This process can also be used in the filed of waste water treatment and so on.