According to Upfront Chromatography, this separation system combines its EBA (Expanded Bed Adsorption) chromatography platform with already available, advanced membrane filtration techniques. With only minimal water consumption, the company says that this is a flexible, sustainable and cost-efficient process that extracts highly functional, quality protein products.
Upfront Chromatography adds that the Rhobust® Whey Refinery is capable of purifying multiple protein products from crude whey in a single, flexible process, which meets the demands of a diverse range of applications. The flexibility of the Rhobust® Whey Refinery platform enables it to be linked to existing membrane-based WPC (Whey Protein Concentrates) plants. The following products are currently purified by the Rhobust® Whey Refinery: WPI (Whey Protein Isolates) +95%; high purity α-lactalbumin and α-lactalbumin enriched WPI; β-lactoglobulin, depleted WPI; β-lactoglobulin +95%; Immunoglobulin enriched WPI; GMP and Lactoferrin. The company adds that all protein products have improved functionality for food ingredient usage, while the gentle EBA purification process conserves the biological activity of protein intended for nutraceutical applications. The protein products are largely free of lipids, carbohydrates and minerals and have a neutral taste profile.
“The Rhobust® Whey Refinery platform provides the lowest cost route for production of highly purified and differentiated food ingredient products with multiple functionalities,” says Allan Lihme, technical director of Upfront.
The combination of Upfront’s Rhobust® EBA unit with advanced membrane techniques enables industrial utilisation of adsorption chromatography and the EBA format enables direct adsorption from crude feed stocks without prior clarification or concentration steps. Rhobust® has been used on the industrial scale level for protein fractionation and is proven to be a sustainable production platform with minimal water and chemical usage.
