ABSTRACT
Ultrafiltration, essentially a laboratory curiosity before 1960, has been rapidly gaining prominence as a practical process for the concentration and purification of macromolecular and colloidal species in solution. For many applications, ultrafiltration offers the additional attraction of added purity of the concentrated product. Constant volume diafiltration is of considerable interest for such applications as latex purification, desalting, solvent and buffer exchange in the preparation of some biological products, and even such relatively esoteric applications as glycerine/water exchange in red cell suspensions for blood cell freezing. The chapter discusses the principles and theory of ultrafiltration and concentration polarization as an introduction to the discussion of the application of this process to the chemical processing, pharmaceutical, food processing, and medical fields. It also discusses the uses of the process in these fields and by a number of specific examples of these uses.
