Abstract
Expanded bed adsorption (EBA) is an integrated technology for capturing target biomolecules directly from particle‐containing feedstock. The adsorbents are the key base to achieve the EBA process and should be designed specially. In present work a new type of composite particles for EBA application was prepared with cellulose as the skeleton, and nickel powder as the densifier through the method of water‐in‐oil suspension thermal regeneration. Two fractions of spherical particles with mean sizes of 101–119 μm and 168–217 μm were obtained and the effects of nickel powder addition on the physical properties of composite particles were analyzed. The results indicated that the cellulose–nickel powder composite particles prepared have appropriate wet density of 1.14–1.78 g/mL, water content of 51–75%, porosity of 81–93%, pore radius of 41–59 nm, and specific surface area of 30–42 m^2^/mL of wet particles. The bed expansion factor at the range of 2–3 was investigated and correlated with Richardson–Zaki equation. In addition, the bed stability with composite particles prepared was demonstrated with the observation of liquid mixing in expanded bed. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 104: 740–747, 2007