Advances in separation of biochemical molecules utilizing Tunable Aqueous Polymer Phase Impregnated Resins

A promising concept of Aqueous Two-Phase Extraction (ATPE) is the 'Tunable Aqueous Polymer Phase Impregnated Resins' (TAPPIR)-Technology. Thereby, one phase of an Aqueous Two-Phase System (ATPS) is immobilized inside porous solids, which are then dispersed in the second aqueous phase. Thus, a liquid-liquid technique is transferred to a solid-liquid-liquid one providing the advantage of an accelerated phase separation. Since the driving force is still the partitioning in the liquid-liquid system, no liquid-liquid phase separation is needed as phase-mixing, or emulsification respectively, is circumvented. To show the applicability of TAPPIR as alternative downstream processing technique, the impregnation stability, the reusability of the solids and the enhancement of mass transfer were investigated.