Cross-flow microfiltration in the food industry: State of the art
article
A decade ago it was expected for cross-flow microfiltration (CF-MF) to become an established filtration technique within 10 years. Making an inventory of the applications of CF-MF in food industry now, one must conclude that a breakthrough has only taken place for applications like wine and vinegar, is about to take place for beer, gelatin and juice and is still at pilot plant scale for e.g. whey, brine, eggs. It is concluded that until now successful application of CF-MF has been limited to replacement of conventional filtration. For other applications, success is retarded by problems like fouling and disappointing separation properties. One exception is the cold pasteurization of skim milk by CF-MF using certain ceramic membranes, of which the surprisingly good performance is still not well understood. Effects of pore size distribution, pore morphology and process configuration on the separation characteristics and sensitivity to fouling are discussed. In contrast to a common belief that the most important aspect in fouling of membranes is the adsorption/adhesion of solutes onto the membrane surface, it is concluded that although this might be true for ultrafiltration, in CF-MF the morphology of the membrane plays a more important role in fouling, together with fluid mechanics. In order to control membrane fouling which, in our view, is the major limiting factor for a breakthrough of CF-MF, it is necessary to develop membranes with high pore density, narrow pore size distribution and an asymmetric morphology. © 1990.
Topics
TNO Identifier
231123
ISSN
00119164
Source
Desalination, 77, pp. 235-258.
Pages
235-258
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