Abstract

1. DISPERSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 16(5). 393-394 (1995) BOOK REVIEW AQUEOUS TWO-PHASE PARTITIONING: Physical Chemistry and Bioanalytical Applications, Boris Y. Zaslavsky, ed., Marcel Dekker, NY, 1995. This book should be viewed against the success of a seemingly simple separation process for biological materials discovered by Per-Alee Albertsson about four decades ago. II builds on the fact that two dilute aqueous polymer solutions containing different polymers (or a polymer solution and a salt solution) lack mutual solubility. Under optimum conditions a single protein from a complex mixture may be highly concentrated in one of the phases, while the other phase contains the remaining ones. The simplicity and high specificity of the method have resulted in scaled up versions of it being widely used in biotechnology. As in many other branches of processes the fundamental insight into the process has been lagging significantly behind the applications and Dr. Zaslavsky's book aims at presenting the essential fundamental factors. He has chosen to neglect the usual polymer science approach and is instead approaching the subject analogously to the phenomena determining the separation of an aqueous solution from an invisible organic solvent, emphasizing hydrophobicity of the solute. With this in mind, the author has