Membranes (Jan 2011)

Direct Contact Membrane Distillation of Dairy Process Streams

  • Mike Weeks,
  • Mikel Duke,
  • Nohemi Quispe-Chavez,
  • Elankovan Ponnampalam,
  • Peter Sanciolo,
  • Todor Vasiljevic,
  • Angela Hausmann

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes1010048
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 1, no. 1
pp. 48 – 58

Abstract

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Membrane distillation (MD) was applied for the concentration of a range of dairy streams, such as whole milk, skim milk and whey. MD of a pure lactose solution was also investigated. Direct contact MD (DCMD) mode experiments were carried out in continuous concentration mode, keeping the warm feed/retentate and cold permeate stream temperatures at 54 °C and 5 °C respectively. Performance in terms of flux and retention was assessed. The flux was found to decrease with an increase of dry-matter concentration in the feed. Retention of dissolved solids was found to be close to 100% and independent of the dry-matter concentration in the feed. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) of the fouled membranes confirms organics being present in the fouling layer.

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