Jetting Manufacturing of Chromatography Resins

Chromatography resins can be made of various materials. Purolite™ Praesto™ Resins are made using agarose, an ideal material for bioprocessing due to its hydrophilic nature and strong physical and chemical properties. These properties enable agarose-based resins to support purification at scale.

The manufacturing method employed for resin production is also important. The traditional method of agarose bead production, batch emulsification, involves dissolving the agarose in a chemical solvent, stirring the mixture to reduce the particle size, and extensively sieving the beads to help reduce the distribution in the range of bead sizes.

Ecolab employs the patented method of Jetting manufacturing to produce resin beads. The Jetting manufacturing process uses fewer harmful solvents and reduces the need for sieving, allowing for shorter lead times while maintaining a narrower bead size distribution than traditional methods.

During the Jetting manufacturing process, agarose is dissolved in water and pushed through precisely sized pores in a canister into a bath of mineral oil

The canister oscillates vertically at a consistent rate, “breaking” the agarose solution into uniformly sized droplets. The droplets harden as the beads cool and undergo cross-linking. The resulting beads are uniform in size, limiting the amount of sieving required and allowing the entire batch to be utilized for chromatography.