Purification During Crossflow Electromicrofiltration of Fermentation Broth

The present study was to investigate the purification of a fermentation broth by an electromicrofiltration membrane. Microfiltration runs with a crude and a centrifuged broth, with solution of particles recovered from centrifugation and with permeates from microfiltration experiments were thus compared. Microfiltration performances were governed by colloids and small particles that induced sharp initial flux declines. For these results, the evolution of the overall membrane resistance was increased by $80\%$ in comparison with the electromicrofiltration membrane. The main focus of this study was set on the enhancement of the filtrate flux by an electric field. This pressure electrofiltration leads to a drastic improvement of the filtration by $100\%$ and the filtration time was thereby reduced. Pressure electrofiltration serves as an inter­esting alternative to the cross-flow filtration and it effectively separates advantageous constitu­ents such as amino acids and biopolymers from a fermentation broth. They were equally main­tained during the microelectrofiltration, although they were significantly reduced by $45\%$ by the microfiltration without the application of an electric field. Accordingly, since the electrofiltration membrane was provided more permeability, this study experimentally demonstrates that the permeability inside a membrane can be controlled using an electric field.