The Performance of Microfiltration Process for Purifying Lactic Acid in the Fermented Broth of Kitchen Waste

Abstract

Fermentation broth is plentiful with lactic acid, an important chemical applied in many fields, such as food processing, the chemical industry, and cosmetics. However, the purification of the lactic acid from the broth is still troublesome, when considering the economy. This study first investigated the purification performance of microfiltration (MF) membrane technology for a fermentation broth from kitchen waste. The effect of operation pressure, broth pH, and membrane flushing mode on the membrane filtration performance were investigated. In addition, the change in filtration performance over the increase in cycle time was also investigated. The results showed that under the optimum pressure of 100 KPa, pH of 6.0, and a backflushing mode with deionized water for 3 min, the best performance was achieved, with chroma removal, turbidity removal, protein removal and total sugar removal efficiencies of 60, 92.8, 57.64 and 32.93%, respectively. The results indicated that the MF process could be a desirable broth purification process to some extent, and it is promising in actual application. The MF process combined with other post-purification processes will form the ideal process system, which should be explored in future research.

Separation Techniques and Circular Economy

“…Additionally, the highest possible value added of the separated products is obtained to enhance the economy. This current Special Issue titled “Separation Techniques and Circular Economy” in Membranes presents the novel separation technologies involving the recovery of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) [ 1 ], calcium alginate (Ca-Alg) [ 2 ] in wastewater treatment, plasmid DNA in gene therapy [ 3 ], lactose in dairy industry [ 4 ], lactic acid (LA) in the fermented broth of kitchen waste [ 5 , 6 ], phenylalanine losses in neutralization dialysis (ND) [ 7 ], the removal of secondary effluent organic matter (EfOM) [ 8 ], and acetaldehyde (CH 3 CHO) in the atmosphere [ 9 ].…”

“…However, the purification of the LA from the broth is still troublesome when considering the economy. The purification performance of MF membrane technology for a fermentation broth from kitchen waste was investigated [ 5 ]. The results indicated that the MF process could be a desirable broth purification process to some extent, and it is promising in actual application.…”