Macrosorb Kieselguhr-agarose composite adsorbents. New tools for downstream process design and scale up. Scientific...

Incompressible Macrosorb composite adsorbents, while retaining all the desirable properties of traditional agarose-based hydrogel media, overcome the operational limitations imposed by the use of soft hydrogels: They permit useful application of fast flow rates without restrictions on bed depth and they can be used in fluidized bed mode. Considerations which are important when contemplating scaled-up processing are discussed. A comparative cost estimate for a production process for extracting albumin from bovine serum in column equipment illustrates the various advantages which may be exploited when using a composite adsorbent in place of a conventional soft gel equivalent.