THE PREPARATION OF COMPOSITE CERAMIC FILTERS FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS

The Aim, the Signaficance, and the Expected Outcomes of the Project:
     Separation and recovery of valuable products by the evaporation of the solvent-application of heat may cause significant deterioration of the properties of the products and also generally energy inefficient. The use of various filtration techniques seems to be a good solution to this problem. In decreasing product size order, microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF), and reverse osmosis (RO) are currently used in food and biotechnology applications. The utilization of a combination of the above filtration techniques may be used for the recovery of desired products from relatively complex mixtures like fermentation broths, whey, milk, etc. The recovery of valuable bioproducts through ceramic MF-UF-NF separation processes is currently investigated worldwide and may offer significant advantages over other membrane and concentration based processes.

    Whey is a valuable byproduct of dairy industry which can be further processed for the production of lactic acid, proteins, enzymes, etc. Research on the fermentation of whey for the preparation of lactic acid have been conducted at IZTECH. The preparation and the design of an optimum ceramic MF-UF-NF system for the above separation problem will be investigated in this work. Alpha alumina, boehmite, zirconia and silica supported membranes will be prepared by using stable sols synthesized by sol-gel techniques. Unsupported ceramic membranes will be characterized by mercury porosimetry, nitrogen adsorption, SEM, TGA, XRD, FTIR and optic microscopy for pore size determination and microstructure analysis. The separation of various products from the fermentation liquor will be investigated in a filtration setup. The concentration of biomass, proteins, lactic acid etc. in the retentate and the permeate will be determined by various techniques like HPLC, UV-Vis Spectrophotometer, ICP and turbidimeter. The results of this work is expected to contribute to the knowledge on the use of ceramic membranes in biotechnology related applications.