Application of Membrane Separation Technology in Biopharmaceutical and Chemical Industry

With the rapid development of membrane separation technology, membrane separation technology has entered the stage of large-scale application. The purification of chemical products, raw materials, and the treatment and reuse of chemical wastewater are gradually accepted by people, especially the advanced treatment and reuse of chemical wastewater develop rapidly.

Ⅰ. The trend of applying membrane separation technology in the chemical industry

The oily sewage in the oilfield accounts for about 1/3 of the total oilfield sewage, and the composition is complex. The use of ultrafiltration technology to treat oily sewage in oilfields can not only avoid environmental and water pollution, but also provide high-quality oilfield reinjection water. Ultrafiltration membrane is used to reprocess the wastewater after oil production pretreatment. The experimental study shows that the oil retention rate of the membrane after ultrafiltration membrane treatment exceeds 97.7%, and the water quality index can reach the reinjection water standard of the oilfield water injection station of low pressure osmosis. At present, the separation and purification of products or the purification of raw material intermediates have been widely used in chlor-alkali chemical industry, pesticide chemical industry and pharmaceutical chemical industry, such as the purification of light brine, the recovery of glyphosate mother liquor, and the separation and purification of antibiotics. This improves efficiency of membrane separation and greatly reduces energy consumption.

Ⅱ. Application of membrane separation technology in biopharmaceuticals

With the continuous development of genetic engineering technology, the separation and purification of organisms and drugs produced by fermentation face a series of new problems such as low content, high activity, easy inactivation and low extraction rate. As a new type of separation technology, membrane separation process has great application potential in modern biopharmaceutical separation engineering and has been widely developed. It has been used for the separation and purification of enzymes, active proteins, amino acids, vitamins, solids, vaccines and other substances. The application of membrane separation technology in antibiotic extraction is also one of the most popular fields.

Successful commercial production of biological products requires separation methods with economical options. The processing process varies depending on the price of the product and the scale of production. However, the objects handled by various drugs in the production process are very different, such as particle size, impurity, and the concentration of the product they require is also different. In order to avoid expensive chromatographic and thermal separation methods, it is very important to select a new separation system for separating solid-liquid mixtures.

Compared with traditional technology, membrane separation has many advantages, such as simplified technology, less investment, less maintenance, simple operation, low operating cost, resource saving, no change in operation, no damage to product structure, high separation efficiency, improved product yield and quality, and solvent consumption are greatly reduced.