A Study of Rotational Ultrafiltration System for Fructose Recovery from Glucose Fermentation Process

Abstract

The technical challenge of recovery fructose from fermentation broth is high viscosity of fermentation liquid and high content of nano-size particles. In this study, an innovative rotational circular-plate ultrafiltration membrane filter with a scraping device was employed to purify fructose and remove fouling cake attached to the membrane surface, achieving fructose filtrate flux of above 40 L/m 2 /h. By the Darcy's Law, the operation parameters for optimum flux such as temperature, pressure, aeration rate could be found. The optimal fructose recovery from fermentation broth was over 90%. The permeate of ultrafiltration membrane could meet the requirements for commercial fructose in terms of chromaticity, turbidity and sugar content. The traditional complex filtration process can be replaced by the novel ultrafiltration device which has an advantage of waste reduction.