Performance evaluation of ceramic membrane on ultrafiltration and diafiltration modes for efficient recovery of whey protein

The recovery of high-quality valuable end products from the whey is a very important industrial process. Ultrafiltration (UF) followed by diafiltration (DF) process improves the recovered protein content in powder and the washing lactose/minerals contents of the concentrate stream in the cheese whey filtration. The aim of this study is to investigate the UD ceramic membrane performance followed by DF with experimental and real-time model results. The experiments conducted by applying UF as the pre-concentration step and two intermittent feed diafiltration (IFD) cycles with disc ceramic membrane having 15kDa molecular weight. Firstly, at the pre-concentration step, the volume concentration factor (VCF) were performed at 1.4, 2.0 and 3.3 ratios. It was observed that the concentrations of whey components increased in the concentrate stream with the increasing of VCF during the UF process. Secondly, two IFD cycles were performed experimentally. The mathematical model for DF yield calculation was applied with real-time function. Thirdly, the fouling experiments were conducted during the overall process steps and three models were used for fouling parameters calculation. By applying the IFD process at the optimum VCF value, the protein percentage could be increased up to 33% in the concentrate stream.