Characterization of Membranes for Enzyme Retention
Soluble enzymes can be used in ultrafiltration membrane reactors to achieve continuous operation at enforced flow (convective) mode. The main difference between normal ultrafiltration for concentration processes and the use for reaction engineering purposes is that—in the later case—the enzyme has to stay for extended periods of time with little loss of protein. For this special case the integral loss governs the performance — as shown in Figure 1 for 4 different rejection coefficients (R). Even a very high retention (99%) yields a loss of enzyme of 40% after 50 times the mean residence time. When the mean residence time lies within a period of one hour, a retention of 99% would lead to a “half life” of activity of about 2.5 days, not taking into account the normal deactiviation.
KeywordsConcentration Polarization Continuous Operation Soluble Enzyme Retention Characteristic Globular Shape
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