Proteindestillering

Proteindestillering is a term that appears in some Swedish-language sources to describe the idea of distilling proteins or protein-containing solutions. In contemporary biochemistry and biotechnology, however, distillation is not used to purify intact proteins because proteins are large, non-volatile molecules that denature under the heat and conditions typical of distillation.

The technical basis for the limitation is that distillation relies on volatility and differences in boiling points. Proteins do not vaporize under practical conditions; heating a protein solution typically leads to denaturation, aggregation, and hydrolysis rather than the production of a protein vapor. While small volatile compounds associated with a protein solution (such as solvents or odorous nitrogenous compounds) can be removed by distillation of the liquid, the protein itself is not distilled and the process does not yield purified protein.

Today, protein purification is achieved mainly through methods such as chromatography (affinity, ion exchange, size exclusion), precipitation (salting-out), ultrafiltration, and electrophoresis. These techniques exploit size, charge, shape, and specific binding interactions rather than volatility.

In some industrial contexts, steam distillation or related techniques might be used to remove volatile impurities from protein-rich materials or to process by-products, but they do not constitute proteindestillering as a method for isolating or purifying intact proteins. The term is rarely used in modern practice and is more often encountered as a historical footnote or in discussions of alternative extraction concepts. See also protein purification, chromatography, ultrafiltration.