Chromatographic Characterization and Process Performance of Column-Packed Anion Exchange Fibrous Adsorbents for High Throughput and High Capacity Bioseparations

Fibrous materials are prominent among novel chromatographic supports for the separation and purification of biomolecules. In this work, strong anion exchange, quaternary ammonium (Q) functional fibrous adsorbents were evaluated with regards to their physical and functional characteristics. A column packed with Q fibrous adsorbent illustrated the good column packing efficiency of theoretical plate height (H) values and higher permeability coefficients (>0.9 × 10−7 cm2) than commercial adsorbents. For pulse experiments with acetone and lactoferrin as tracers under nonbinding conditions, the total porosity (for acetone) and the interstitial porosity (for lactoferrin) measured 0.97 and 0.47, respectively. The total ionic capacity of the chemically-functionalized Q fiber was 0.51 mmol/mL. The results indicated that the Q fiber had a static binding capacity of 140 mg/mL and a dynamic binding capacity (DBC) of 76 mg/mL for bovine serum albumin (BSA) and showed a linearly-scalable factor (~110 mL) for a column volume with high capacity and high throughput. Furthermore, this adsorptive material had the ability to bind OPEN ACCESS Processes 2015, 3 205 the high molecular weight protein, thyroglobulin, with a capacity of 6 mg/mL. This work demonstrated the column-packed Q fibrous adsorption system as a potential chromatography support that exhibits high capacity at higher flow rates.