Journal of Membrane Science, Vol.509, 164-172, 2016
Size-cartography of orange juices foulant particles: Contribution to a better control of fouling during microfiltration
Despite the several advantages of microfiltration, applications of this separation technique in fruit juice industries have been challenged by its low economical productivity due to membrane fouling. Although several studies aimed to identify operating conditions (e.g. juice pretreatment, crossflow filtration mode, etc.) to achieve acceptable performances, only few studies focused on the fouling propensity of fruit juices and on the identification of their foulant compounds. The aim of this work was to evaluate the fouling behavior of two orange juices and focused on the identification of relevant size-classes of foulant particles. Lab-scale filtration tests were carried out in conjunction with juice size-fractionation with the aim of quantifying the resistance to filtration of the juices. Based on a resistance-in-series approach, size-cartographies of foulant particles that are juice and membrane-specific were built. These cartographies were provided for two mineral membranes M-1.2 and M-0.2 with different average pore diameters (1.2 and 0.2 mu m). M-1.2 results showed that the fouling is mainly external for both juices and due to particles larger than 2 mu m. In contrast, results concerning M-0.2 filtration tests showed that four different size-classes of fruit juices compounds are involved in different fouling mechanisms. Moreover, the hydraulic reversibility of the fouling mechanisms was evaluated through the impact of shear rate on the measured resistances. It was seen that the fouling was mainly reversible when M-1.2 was used for both juices filtration while it was not the case when juices were filtered with M-0.2. This information would be interesting to choose the appropriate strategy in order to enhance the microfiltration of these juices at large scale. Moreover, the proposed size-cartography strategy would greatly satisfy the industrial demand for practical tool to identify the different size-classes of compounds governing the overall membrane fouling. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.