Microfluidics: A Novel Approach for Dehydration Protein Droplets

The equation of state of colloids plays an important role in the modelling and comprehension of industrial processes, defining the working conditions of processes such as drying, filtration, and mixing. The determination of the equation is based on the solvent equilibration, by dialysis, between the colloidal suspension and a reservoir with a known osmotic pressure. In this paper, we propose a novel microfluidic approach to determine the equation of state of a lysozyme solution. Monodispersed droplets of lysozyme were generated in the bulk of a continuous 1-decanol phase using a flow-focusing microfluidic geometry. In this multiphasic system and in the working operation conditions, the droplets can be considered to act as a permeable membrane system. A water mass transfer flow occurs by molecule continuous diffusion in the surrounding 1-decanol phase until a thermodynamic equilibrium is reached in a few seconds to minutes, in contrast with the standard osmotic pressure measurements. By changing the water saturation of the continuous phase, the equation of state of lysozyme in solution was determined through the relation of the osmotic pressure between protein molecules and the volume fraction of protein inside the droplets. The obtained equation shows good agreement with other standard approaches reported in the literature.