lecture 5&6

An Introduction to Bio separations
Bio separation is the name given to the practice of purifying biological products on large-scale, using fundamental aspects of engineering and scientific principles. The end goal of bio separation is to refine molecules, cells and parts of cells into purified fractions.
Bio separation study the processes used to recover, isolate, predicate and polish products made by/of biological materials
Biological products can be separated and purified depending upon the following characteristics: density, diffusivity, electrostatic charge, polarity, shape, size, solubility and volatility.
Bio separation or downstream processing: - refers to the recovery, isolation, purification and polishing of products synthesized by biotechnological processes (e.g. r-DNA technology, conventional microbial fermentation, enzyme technology, and hybridism technology).
Differences between Bio separation and Chemical Separation
Although bio separation is based on traditional chemical separation processes, they do differ in significant ways. This is because the materials being purified and separated in bio separation are biological substances rather than the synthetic chemicals used in traditional techniques. As such, substances such as proteins, carbohydrates and nucleic acids are not suitable for the rigors of traditional techniques like packed-bed adsorption and evaporation.