Modeling of Affinity Chromatography

Affinity chromatography has seen rapid growth in recent years. It is a powerful tool for the purification of enzymes, antibodies, antigens, and many other proteins and macromolecules that are of important use in scientific research and development of novel biological drugs. Affinity chromatography not only purifies a product, but also concentrates the product to a considerable extent [32]. Over the years, this subject has been reviewed by many people, including Chase [32], and Liapis [93]. Affinity chromatography is also called biospecific adsorption, since it utilizes the biospecific binding between the solute molecules and immobilized ligands. The monovalent binding between a ligand and a solute macromolecule is generally considered as following second order kinetics expressed by Eqs. (3–32) and (3–33).