Superporous pellicular κ-Carrageenan–Nickel composite beads; morphological, physical and hydrodynamics evaluation for expanded bed adsorption application

Abstract

Expanded bed adsorption (EBA) is an authentic separation method for the purification of bioproducts. Novel pellicular κ-Carrageenan–Nickel (KC–Ni) and superporous κ-Carrageenan–Nickel (SP-KC–Ni) adsorbent beads have been fabricated and evaluated using water in oil emulsification and granule leaching methods. The morphology, structure and porosity of the fabricated composite matrices were investigated. A proper spherical shape and porous structure with nano sized pores in the range of about 50–190nm has been detected for the KC–Ni beads and upper than 50% of the SP-KC–Ni superpores was at the range of 600–5400nm. The results from the image processing indicated that the KC–Ni particles had normal size distribution with the range of 60–320μm. As a result of physical properties measurements, a proper wet density at the range of 1.43–2.42g/mL was resulted for the adsorbent beads. The porosity and effective porosity of egg albumin (EA) for SP-KC–Ni3 was measured about 98.89% and 73.87% respectively. Residence time distribution (RTD) measurements were applied to investigate hydrodynamic characteristics of KC–Ni and SP-KC–Ni matrices in expanded bed. The results showed that proper physical and hydrodynamic characteristics of KC–Ni and SP-KC–Ni matrices confirm the potential of use in high speed expanded bed chromatography.