Search

The promotion of efficiency and the reduction of energy consumption are very important tasks in every industrial process as well in food production. Although membrane filtration is a low-energy and environmental friendly separation method it still needs improvement in many fields. In our earlier research it was stated that a static mixer combined with ceramic tube membrane results higher permeate flux and lower specific energy consumption in case separation of oily wastewater. This paper deals with the extension of this combined method to the separation of milk whey. It was found that static turbulence promotion inside a tube membrane during ultrafiltration of whey can increase permeate flux and decrease energy consumption, inside a given spectra of operating parameters, compared to the conventional mode (when no static mixing applied in the process).