Whey protein fractionation is an important industrial process that requires effective large-scale processes. Although packed bed chromatography has been used extensively, it suffers from low processing rates due to high back-pressures generated at high flow rates. Batch chromatography has been applied but generally has a low efficiency. More recently, adsorptive membranes have shown great promise for large-scale protein purification, particularly from large-volume dilute feedstocks. A new

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... for producing versatile adsorptive membranes by combining membrane and chromatographic resin matrices has been developed but not previously applied to whey protein fractionation. In this work, a series of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) were developed for membrane chromatography using ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVAL) based membranes and various types of adsorbent resin. The feasibility of MMM was tested in bovine whey protein fractionation processes. Flat sheet anion exchange MMMs were cast using EVAL and crushed Lewatit® MP500 (Lanxess, Leverkusen, Germany) anion resin, expected to bind the acidic whey proteins β-lactoglobulin (β-Lac), α-lactalbumin (α-Lac) and bovine serum albumin (BSA). The MMM showed a static binding capacity of 120 mg β-Lac g⁻¹ membrane (36 mg β-Lac mL⁻¹ membrane) and 90 mg α-Lac g⁻¹ membrane (27 mg α-Lac mL⁻¹ membrane). It had a selective binding towards β-Lac in whey with a binding preference order of β-Lac > BSA > α-Lac. In batch whey fractionation, average binding capacities of 75.6 mg β-Lac g⁻¹ membrane, 3.5 mg α-Lac g⁻¹ membrane and 0.5 mg BSA g⁻¹ membrane were achieved with a β-Lac elution recovery of around 80%. Crushed SP Sepharose™ Fast Flow (GE Healthcare Technologies, Uppsala, Sweden) resin was used as an adsorbent particle in preparing cation exchange MMMs for lactoferrin (LF) recovery from whey. The static binding capacity of the cationic MMM was 384 mg LF g⁻¹membrane or 155 mg LF mL⁻¹ membrane, exceeding the capacity of several commercial adsorptive membranes. Adsorption of lysozyme o [...]