Removing proteins from an aerated yeast fermentation by pulsing carbon dioxide

Abstract

Salting-out is a common technique used for precipitating proteins and other materials from fermentation and tissue culture processes. It leaves a salt residue in the system. Foam fractionation can also be used to remove proteins by protein precipitation from a dilute solution. In doing so, there is usually a trade-off between enrichment and recovery. An increase in the airflow rate will increase the recovery, but only at the expense of the enrichment. A new method for increasing the recovery in foam fractionations and in yeast fermentations is to add a burst of CO₂ to the process and then restore the air. This CO₂ acts like a temporary salt, but it does not leave behind a residue. The recovery increases as a result of the joint use of these gases, perhaps by more than 10-fold, without sacrificing the enrichment. Chicken egg albumin in a foam fractionation column can serve as a simple, experimental model for the proposed recovery process in lieu of the fermentation process.