Application of ultrasonic backscattering for level measurement and process monitoring of expanded-bed adsorption columns

Abstract

Expanded-bed adsorption is a newly commercialized technique for the purification of proteins from cellular debris in downstream processing. An expanded bed presents the possibility of protein recovery in a single step, eliminating the often costly clarification processing steps such as ultrafiltration, centrifugation, and precipitation. A major obstacle to the successful commercialization of this technology is the inability to accurately monitor and control the bed height in these systems. Fluctuations in the feedstock viscosity are common during normal operation and tend to make the operation and control of expanded beds for biological applications complex and difficult. We develop a level measurement technique based upon ultrasonics. It is shown that this technique has great promise for bed-height measurement in expanded-bed adsorption systems. Furthermore, the bed-height measurement can be used in feedback control strategies for bed-height regulation. The proposed ultrasonic sensor is also capable of monitoring for plugging and bubbling in the column.