Membrane Fouling Dynamics in the Clarification of Pineapple Juice after Egg Albumin Pretreatment: A Study on Hermia’s Empirical Models

Abstract

The present study investigated membrane fouling during the clarification of pineapple juice after pretreatment with egg albumin. Pineapple (Ananascomosus L., Merril) is the most popular tropical non-citrus fruits, mainly because of their attractive aroma, refreshing flavour and Brix/acid ratio. The research was carried out on the membrane clarification of pineapple juice after pretreatment. Pretreatment of pineapple juice was performed using egg albumin with different concentrations and observed that 2 g/L concentration gave effective removal of colloidal substances of pineapple juice. The membrane processing of pineapple juice was performed with all different pore size, pressures, flowrates and the coefficient of determination (R2) values were analysed. Hermia’s empirical models were applied to evaluate the fouling phenomena in microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) of pineapple juice. The flux data was fitted into existing fouling models to elucidate the fouling mechanisms during membrane processing. The coefficient of determination (R²) values for the gel layer model ranged from 0.829 to 0.957 for the 0.2 µm pore size membrane when filtering pineapple juice. In Microfiltration (MF) membrane, the data revealed that IPB was predominant, as the pore size of membrane is larger than Ultrafiltration (UF).