Table 1.

Summary of magnetic separation strategies for biotechnological downstream processing.

Separation principle	Advantages	Disadvantages	Applications	References
Magnetic collection	Fast, high throughput, process control	Recovery of MPs, multiple steps	Target purification (HGMS, OGMS)	Safarik et al., 2001; Brown et al., 2013; Fraga García et al., 2015; Müller et al., 2015; Schwaminger et al., 2019a
Magnetic flocculation	Fast, filtration	Inclusion of impurities, recovery, polymerbeads	Harvest	Svoboda, 1982; Wang et al., 2014
Magnetic flotation	Fast, separation, recovery	Aeration limitation, foaming, blockage	Purification, harvest (GAMS, GASE)	Li et al., 2013, 2014; Dong et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2016
Magnetic sedimentation	Separation, low loss of MP, characterization	Small scale, low density beads, energy (Centrifuge)	Magnetic centrifuge	Scherer et al., 2002; Berret et al., 2007; Lindner and Nirschl, 2014; Mykhaylyk et al., 2015
Magnetic sorting	Different shapes, sizes or magnetizations	Slow, small scale, expensive	Cell sorting	Miltenyi and Schmitz, 2000; Chen et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2017; Solsona et al., 2018
Magnetic stabilized bed	Continuous, homogeneous bed	Pressure drop, reactor size, field circulation, diffusion	Processing (MSBR)	Albert and Tien, 1985; Rosensweig and Ciprios, 1991; Zong et al., 2013

The advantages and the disadvantages of magnetic separation strategies are shown. The separator setups where these strategies can be applied are displayed.