Recovery of actinorhodin from fermentation broth

In the present work, a new method of purification for actinorhodin was developed using an expanded bed chromatography technique in which antibiotic capture, feedstock clarification, centrifugation, dialysis and concentration are done in one step. The cation-exchanger (P-11) resulted in 26% adsorption and 2% recovery whereas the anion-exchanger (DE-52) resulted in 99% adsorption and 56% recovery of adsorbed antibiotic using methanol buffer and 2 M NH4Cl as eluting agent. Streamline DEAE anion-exchanger, which is especially designed for EBA applications, yields 82% adsorption and 50% elution of actinorhodin fed into the chromatography column directly from the fermentation broth. Isocratic elution resulted in extremely efficient yield compared to linear gradient elution, i.e. 13.5-fold more recovery in the column with an aspect ratio (L:D) of 4. Expansion by 150% of settled bed resulted in the best recovery of actinorhodin among 100 and 200% expansions. A comparison of breakthrough profiles in packed and expanded bed adsorption showed that the performance of the expanded bed is better (by 33%) at allowing more volume of the fermentation broth to pass through the chromatography column.