Expanded Bed Adsorption (EBA) represents the most exciting development in the field of biomolecule separations since the introduction of packed bed chromatography in the 1950s.

The principle of EBA is to allow the chromatography beads to fluidise in the feed stream which is pumped at low pressure. The expanded bed allows particulate impurities in the feed stream to pass freely – and at very high flow rates – through the system without any clogging or pressure building up throughout the process. The EBA process offers a solution to eliminate the costly pre-filtration steps of packed-bed implementations, and has the potential to deliver significant cost savings for biomolecule manufacture.

The expanded bed adsorption process comprises the same steps as classical packed bed chromatography: load of feedstock, wash of adsorbent, elution/de-sorption of product, regeneration and equilibration.