Effect of hydraulic pressure and electric field on electro-microfiltration in the wine-brewery industry

The present study investigates the respective impact of dissolved constituents in the fermentation, suspended solids, and particles on the purification of fermentation broth by an electro-microfiltration membrane process. Microfiltration by these constituents induced sharp initial flux declines, the overall membrane resistance was increased by fouling. The hydraulic electro-filtration led to a drastic improvement of the filtration, and the filtration time was thereby reduced. The electro-filtration apparatus serves as an interesting alternative to the cross-flow filtration. Therefore, experimental results were discussed with solution of particles recovered from centrifugation and with permeates from microfiltration experiments.

Concentration (%)/Protein amount (mg/liter) Electrofiltration with hydraulic pressure is an effective tool to influence the membrane processing. According to these findings electrofiltration is a promising alternative for the biopolymer recovery, which may in many cases be superior to cross-flow filtration. The experimental results can be described as follows. • First, the membrane resistances in the microelectrofiltration at 24 V were reduced by 85.1% in comparison with the microfiltration membrane. • Second, the proteins and amino acids of fermented broth equally maintained during microelectrofiltration, although they were significantly reduced by 45% in microfiltration without applying an electric field.