Preparative ion-exchange chromatography of proteins from dairy whey.

A preparative-scale ion-exchange chromatographic process is described for the separation of the four major proteins and lactose from sweet dairy whey. Experiments using a commercial anion-exchange resin were carried out to determine the optimum conditions for initially separating the proteins alpha-lactalbumin, beta-lactoglobulin, bovine serum albumin, immunoglobulin G and lactose from a sweet dairy whey mixture. The separation was accomplished with simultaneous step elution changes in salt concentration and pH. It was found that the anion-exchange step was most effective in separating beta-lactoglobulin from the feed mixture. Following the anion-exchange separation, its breakthrough curve was processed using a commercial cation-exchange resin to further recover the valuable immunoglobulin G. The whey output from an east Tennessee cheese manufacturer was used as a feedstream for the preparative scale experiments and as a reference in scaling to an economically optimized production level operation.