Biotechnological and Biomedical Applications of Magnetically Stabilized and Fluidized Beds - Porous Media: Applications in Biological Systems and Biotechnology - page 459

Zrunchev and Popova 1975) were the first to apply this technique to ammo-
nia synthesis. Some important developments were also reported by Herschler
(1969), which consisted of the application of magnetic fields to liquid metals
and to fluidized beds formed by magnetizable particles. Herschler also showed
that the magnetic field would induce a good mixture if it was created by an
alternating current. Later, some works were published on the hydrodynam-
ics of MSB and MFB (Penchev et al. 1990; Conta et al. 1998), and even on
some less common techniques like countercurrent contacting gas-solid mag-
netic valves (Jaraiz 1983; Jaraiz and Estevez 1987). Mass transfer in MSFB has
always been an important research topic because of the important and singu-
lar mass transfer characteristics that MSFB possesses. Arnaldos et al. (1985)
and Neff and Rubinsky (1983) studied the way heat is transferred in MSFB,
and Arnaldos and Casal (1987) and Terranova and Burns (1991) described
the observed heat transfer in liquid and gas fluidized beds. In what concerns
applications, we may refer works on aerosol filtration (Albert and Tien 1985;
Geuzens and Thoens 1988a,b), biotechnology (Terranova and Burns 1991),
bioreactors (Moffat et al. 1994; Hristov and Ivanova 1999), adsorption (e.g.,
waste removal (Nunez and Kaminski 1998), removal of metal ions (Anacleto
and Carvalho 1996; Sedzimir 2002; Zouboulis and Katsoyiannis 2002)), ana-
lytical separations (Siegell 1988; Graves 1992), and bioseparations (Graves
1992; Evans and Burns 1995). This topic continues to deserve the attention
of many researchers, and it is easy to find recent publications on the fun-
damentals of MSBs and MFBs for coal separation (Fan et al. 2003), biolog-
ical and medical applications ( Ozkara et al. 2004; Uzun and Denizli 2006;
Al-Qodah and Al-Shannag 2007)—these applications will be further detailed
in this chapter—environmental applications (Paice and Jurasek 1984; Nyens
1995; Rodriguez et al. 1999; Estevez et al. 2008), hydrodynamics (Britton
et al. 2005), mass transfer studies (Hausmann et al. 2000), and applications
to catalysis (Graham et al. 2006; Gui and Zhang 2006; Dong et al. 2008).
Good reviews on MSFB have been published (Bologa and Syutkin 1977;
Colver 1979; Siegell 1989; Sonolikar 1989; Liu et al. 1991; Saxena et al. 1994),
and more recently Hristov presented a series of reviewing papers detailing the
major developments in this field (Hristov 2002, 2003a,b, 2004, 2006b, 2007,
2009).
The goal of this chapter is to present a basic understanding of MFB and
MSB, its principles and background theory, and complement the above cited
reviews by considering the applications of this technique to biotechnology
and biomedicine, thus giving a concise review of the field and its current
applications.
12.2.2 Biotechnology and Biomedicine
Several applications, at laboratorial and industrial scale, of the MSFBs in sev-
eral areas of science have been developed through the years. In the last decades
a significant effort has been put into the development of biotechnological