Microfiltration of Milk with Third Generation Ceramic Membranes

Abstract

The objective of this study was to compare the behavior of different ceramic membranes during skimmed milk microfiltration. Permeate flow rates, protein rejection, and decimal reduction of bacteria were compared for three different 1.4-mm pore size ceramic membranes, one of which was considered traditional (ceramic multichannel membrane) while the other two had a modified structure (on either the macroporous support or the filtering layer). Permeate flux ranged from 400 to 530 Lm À2 h À1 at 0.5 bar of transmembrane pressure. Protein rejection values between 0.8 and 2.9% were obtained. Temperature (21-45 C) did not have a significant effect. Membranes showed decimal reduction in total bacterial count between 3.5 and 5.2, with Isoflux 1 membranes showing higher values. The lifespan of microfiltered milk was extended to 10 days in the absence of heat treatment.

Cross-Flow Microfiltration of Glycerol Fermentation Broths with Citrobacter freundii

“…Table A1, Appendix A summaries literature review related to the cross-flow MF of bacterial suspensions by using ceramic membranes. It indicates that microfiltration process is becoming increasingly attractive in the biotechnology industry in order to obtain a clarified filtrate from various bacterial products such as skim milk [1][2][3][4][5][6], skimmed colostrum [7], gum arabic suspension [8], cell suspension [9][10][11][12], fermentation soy sauce [13,14], and fermentation broths [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. It has to be pointed out that with regard to complex media such as fermentation broths, microfiltration is proposed as a pre-treatment stage for the final separation by nanofiltration (NF) or reverse osmosis (RO) processes with spiral-wound modules [26].…”

“…This causes in increasing operational costs and reduces a membrane's lifetime [33][34][35][36]. Based on literature review, it can be analyzed that flux decline during MF of biological suspensions is affected by a great number of factors, such as: (i) process parameters (transmembrane pressure, feed flow rate, and temperature) [1,2,4,6,12,16,[18][19][20][21][22][23]25,37,38], (ii) membrane properties (pore size and its distribution, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity character) [1,3,6,14,21,25,37,39], (iii) feed solution properties (nature, bacterial cell mass, particle size, and pH) [11,12,21,22,38], and (iv) interaction between foulants and membranes [3,22]. It should be mentioned that these interactions are often unknown or not understood at the fundamental level [40].…”

Process efficiency of casein separation from milk using polymeric spiral-wound microfiltration membranes

“…Two types of membranes are commonly used for MF processes: tubular ceramic membranes and spiralwound (SW) membranes (Cheryan, 1998;Hu et al, 2015). Tubular ceramic membranes are a popular choice of membrane material for MF applications due to their high thermal resistance, narrow pore size distribution and high hydraulic performance (Zulewska et al, 2009;Fernández García and Rodríguez, 2015). Over time, alternatives have been developed to prevent membrane fouling, which is the main challenge in MF (Guerra et al, 1997).…”

Preparation of kaolin-based low-cost porous ceramic supports using different amounts of carbonates

“…Porous ceramic membranes (also called inorganic membranes) possess superior chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability with longer life span than polymeric membranes [1][2][3]. Their high cost and large pore size limit the extensive use of ceramic membranes.…”