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

Expanded bed adsorption (EBA) is an authentic separation method for the purification of bioproducts. Novel pellicular kappa-Carrageenan-Nickel (KC-Ni) and superporous kappa-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 50-190 nm has been detected for the KC-Ni beads and upper than 50% of the SP-KC-Ni superpores was at the range of 600-5400 nm. The results from the image processing indicated that the KC-Ni particles had normal size distribution with the range of 60-320 mu m. As a result of physical properties measurements, a proper wet density at the range of 1.43-2.42 g/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. (C) 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.