Effect of operational parameters on the microfiltration performance of sugar beet raw juice

In this paper, the effect of transmembarne pressure (TMP) at levels of 1, 1.75 & 2.5 bar, process temperature (T) at levels of 30 & 60oC and operation time (t) at levels of 15, 30, 45 & 60 minute on the permeate flux, sugar rejection, non-sugar rejection and fouling as membrane performance indexes investigated. Membrane system used in this research was ceramic tubular module and it had effective area and average pore diameter of 0.28 m2 and 0.2 μm, respectively. The results showed that the permeate flux at each levels of TMP and T decreased with increasing operation time. Increasing TMP at T=30oC led to decreasing the JP, but for T=60oC, the JP increased with increasing TMP. However, the flux values for T=30oC was higher than T=60oC at all TMP levels. In this research, it also observed that the fouling values at T=60oC were greater as compared to T=30oC at all TMP levels. Furthermore, in the best operation condition, the sugar and non-sugar rejections obtained -30% and 65%, respectively.