28233 Recovery and Purification of Biological Products

Tutorial Centrifugation

Background

In a bioprocess for industrial enzyme production, after fermentation cells need to be separated from the
liquid in which they grow. In extracellular enzyme production, the cells are discarded while the liquid
(enzyme solution) is recovered for further downstream processing (supernatant). With yeast a centrifuge is
commonly used to remove the cells, but this also removes some liquid, resulting in a yield loss.

Centrifuge

You have a disc-stack centrifuge with 200 discs (n), with an angle of 55°. External radius (R) is 0.25 m and
internal radius (r) 0.08 m. Max rotation speed of 5000 rpm.

Properties of the fermentation broth

The cells to be separated are 2 µm in diameter. The cells have a density of 1090 kg/m3 and the liquid has a
density of 1025 kg/m3. The viscosity of the broth is 0.035 Pa.s.

Mass balance details

There are 25 tons of liquid and cells (together termed broth) which need to be processed. The cells account
for 12% v/v of the centrifuge feed (i.e. that coming from the fermenter). The centrifuge discharge contains
60% v/v water and the rest (40% v/v) is cells. Assume the supernatant contains no cells.

Tutorial

1. Calculate the flowrate (m3/h) of the centrifuge that is possible.

2. How many centrifuges are needed if you need to process all the broth in a cycle time of 5 hours.

3. What is the yield of the centrifugation operation?

Relevant conversions: 1 Pa.s = 1 kg m-1 s-2; 1 rpm = 2π/ 60 rad.s-1; 1° = π/ 180 rad