Alginate use in displacement chromatography as a displacer has been studied. The experiments showed that untreated alginate is the basis of potential displacer for displacement chromatography, but needs to be cleaved into smaller chains. Alginate treated with ultrasound, which cleaves alginate into shorter polysaccharide chains, gave better displacement than untreated alginate, while alginate subjected to limited acid hydrolysis gave the best results in displacement chromatography. It was found that the mixture of ovalbumin and beta-lactoglobulin separated well, and several components of ovalbumin were also separated and purified when alginate hydrolysate was used as a displacer. beta-Lactoglobulins A and B, which have the same molecular weight and differ in isoelectric point by only 0.1 pH units, were displaced from Q-Sepharose by alginate hydrolysate.