Concentration by membrane separation processes of a medicinal product obtained from pineapple pulp

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes,Francisco Luiz Gumes
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Severo Júnior,João Baptista, Souza,Roberto Rodrigues de, Ehrhardt,Daniela Diniz, Santana,José Carlos Curvelo, Tambourgi,Elias Basile
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-89132009000200024
• topic: Ananas comosus; bromelain; membrane separation processes; purification; medicinal product

The concentration of pineapple juice is needed to retain the bromelain activity and to standardize the composition and proteolytic activity. Thus, this work aimed to obtain a pure bromelain extract from the Ananas comosus L. Merril juice by membrane separation process. A 2² experimental planning was used to study the influence of pH and transmembrane pressure on the activity recovery by micro-filtration using a plain membrane. In second step, this enzyme was purified by the ultra-filtration using a 10 kDa millipore kit. The best operation condition to bromelain concentration using the plain membrane was at pH 7.5 and transmembrane pressure of 0.05 bar, while 85% of bromelain activity was recovered. Ultra-filtration retained 100% of proteolytic activity and concentrated in 10 fold the bromelain extract. SDS-PAGE electrophoresis showed that the ultra-filtrated had high purity and the bromelain from A. comosus pulp had a molecular weight of 24.5 kDa.