https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9781-7855
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ABSTRACT
Pulsatile crossflow has often been suggested as a fouling mitigation concept for microfiltration. Besides beneficial effects regarding flux in the filtration of model suspensions, little is known about the effects on the fractionation efficiency when separating proteins in complex multi-component systems. Therefore, this study focusses on the impact of low-frequency pulsatile crossflow on fractionation efficiency during microfiltration of skimmed milk. We found a relaxation of the deposited casein layer during low-crossflow and thus low-transmembrane pressure phases. However, during high-crossflow and high-transmembrane pressure phases, the deposit layer is rapidly re-compressed. The results indicate that, due to this cyclic stress, the overall packing of the deposit layer increases over time and impairs the separation efficiency.
Acknowledgements
This IGF Project of the FEI was supported via AiF (AiF 31 EWN) within the program for promoting the Industrial Collective Research (IGF) of the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), based on a resolution of the German Parliament.
The authors want to thank Dirk Weber from Pentair X-Flow BV for the hollow fiber supply, Simon Stöckli and Antony Sibilia from Levitronix GmbH for the supply and technical support with the centrifugal pumps and Siegfried Tuchborn from SIMA-tec GmbH for the implementation of the filtration plant and fruitful discussions. We acknowledge Claudia Hengst and Heidi Wohlschläger for their analytical support and Simon Scheibenzuber for his experimental support.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no financial or commercial conflict of interest. The funders and industrial partners had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data.