Orange juice ultrafiltration: characterisation of deposit layers and membrane surfaces after fouling and cleaning

Nurul Hainiza Abd-Razak; Y. M. John Chew; Michael R. Bird

doi:10.1515/ijfe-2021-0096

Abstract

The influence of feed condition and membrane cleaning during the ultrafiltration (UF) of orange juice for phytosterol separation was investigated. UF was performed using regenerated cellulose acetate (RCA) membranes at different molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) values with a 336 cm² membrane area and a range of temperatures (10–40 °C) and different feed volumes (3–9 L). Fluid dynamic gauging (FDG) was applied to assess the fouling and cleaning behaviours of RCA membranes fouled by orange juice and cleaned using P3-Ultrasil 11 over two complete cycles. During the FDG testing, fouling layers were removed by fluid shear stress caused by suction flow. The cleanability was characterised by using ImageJ software analysis. A Liebermann-Buchard-based method was used to quantify the phytosterol content. The results show that RCA 10 kDa filters exhibited the best separation of phytosterols from protein in orange juice at 20 °C using 3 L feed with a selectivity factor of 17. Membranes that were fouled after two cycles showed higher surface coverage compared to one fouling cycle. The surface coverage decreased with increasing fluid shear stress from 0 to 3.9 Pa. FDG achieved 80–95% removal at 3.9 Pa for all RCA membranes. Chemical cleaning using P3-Ultrasil 11 altered both the membrane surface hydrophobicity and roughness. These results show that the fouling layer on RCA membranes can be removed by fluid shear stress without affecting the membrane surface modification caused by chemical cleaning.

Keywords: fouling; orange juice; shear stress; ultrafiltration

Corresponding author: Michael R. Bird, Centre of Advanced Separations Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK, E-mail: M.R.Bird@bath.ac.uk

Funding source: Malaysian Rubber Board http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100014723

Award Identifier / Grant number: RMK11-T2SH41201

Acknowledgements

Nurul Hainiza Abd Razak also thanks the Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB) for providing her with personal financial support. The authors would like to thank Dr Haofei Guo of Alfa Laval, Denmark for donating the membranes that were used in this study. We also thank Dr Philip Fletcher (University of Bath) for his assistance with the microscopy aspects of this paper.

Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
Research funding: The authors are grateful to the Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB) for supporting this project through grant: RMK11-T2SH41201.
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/ijfe-2021-0096).

Received: 2021-03-30

Accepted: 2021-09-18

Published Online: 2021-09-27

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Supplementary Material