Bioseparation Process

BEL 731
Lecture 4
31st July, 2019

Beer

Filter cakes
Filter additives

Filter medium

Filtrate
1 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi
Darcy’s law
V = velocity of the liquid
K = proportionality constant
Δp = Pressure drop across
the bed of thickness l
l = Bed thickness
𝜇 = Viscosity of the liquid

2 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

Darcy’s law: Basic differential equation for filtration at
constant pressure drop

Darcy Equation

For batch filtration, the velocity can be written as

follows:
Where V is the total volume of filtrate and A is
the cross section area of the filter material

3 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

Incompressible cakes

Valid for incompressible cakes

4 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

Compressible cakes

Valid for compressible cakes

where α’ is a constant related
largely to the size and shape of
the particles forming cake and s,
the cake compressibility varies
from 0 for a rigid and
incompressible cake to near 1 for
a highly compressible cake
S ranges from 0.1 – 0.8

5 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

Streptomyces filtration from an Erythromycin Brth.
Using a test filter, we find the following data for a broth
containing the antibiotic erythromycic and added filter
aid:
Filtration Time (sec) Volume of Filtrate (liters)
5 0.040
10 0.055
20 0.080
30 0.095

The filter lead has a total area of 0.009290 m2 and

filtrate has viscosity of 1.1 x 10-3 Pa Sec. The pressure
drop is 6.77278 104 Pa. The feed contains 0.015 kg dry
cake per liter

6 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

Filtration of Beer-containing protease: We have a suspension of B.
subtilis fermented to produce the enzyme protease. To separate the
biomass, we have added 1.3 times the biomass of a Celatom filter aid,
yielding a beer containing 3.6 wt% solids, with a viscosity of 6.6 cp.
With a Buchner funnel 5 cm in diameter attached to an aspirator, we
have found that we can filter 100 cm3 of this beer in 24 minutes at
14.7 psi pressure. However, previous studies with this type beer have
had a compressible cake with s equal to 2/3. We now need to filter
3000 liters of this material in one of the pilot plants’ plate-and-frame
filter presses. This press has 15 frames, each area of 3520 cm2. The
spacing between these frames can be made large. This is an
advantage as we can then filter all the beer without emptying the
press and hence reduce the risk of contaminations. The resistance of
the filters themselves is much smaller than filter cake, and the total
pressure drop which can be used is 65 psi. (a) How long will it take to
filter this beer at 50 psi? (b) How long will it take to at this pressure
drop?

7 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi

A small test filtration of auromycin crystals in an acetone suspension
uses a filter medium of negligible resistance. It gives the following
data:

Filtration Time (sec) Volume of Filtrate (liters)

10 0.500
20 0.707
30 0.866

In finding these data, we have used a filter with 89 cm2

area and a pressure drop of 2.6 m of water. We now
plan to filter a much larger crop of crystals containing
7300 liters of solvent by using a filter of 1.3 m2.
However, this large crop has a concentration of 0.28
g/100 cm3 solvent, less than that in our test filtration,
which is 0.34 g/100 cm3 of solvent. How long will it take
to filter this new crop at the same pressure drop?
8 Rohan Jain | rjain@iitd.ac.in | DBEB, IIT Delhi