Abstract
We developed a design method for an inhomogeneous membrane cascade by adopting the McCabe-Thiele method, which is long established for designing distillation columns. The stage cut value is an independent design parameter in the design procedure and thus has to be set. Within each section, the operating conditions were uniform, but both sections could be operated differently using various combinations of membranes, trans-membrane pressure, temperature and stage cut. The procedure was applied to cascaded nanofiltration for the fractionation of a mixture of fructooligosaccharides of varying molecular weight. The stage and area requirements were strongly dependent on the initial design parameter, the overall stage cut. The total area was related to the overall system cut. However, the overall system cut was dependent on the stage cuts for both sections (top and bottom). The top stage cut could be chosen, whereas the bottom stage cut needed to be calculated iteratively to match the top design at the intersection.
Highlights
Nanofiltration is a common process to purify fructooligosaccharides (FOS) from a mixture, which appears in natural sources such as chicory as a mixture of oligosaccharides with various degrees of polymerization (DP)
As an independent design parameter, the stage cut should be defined before the design procedure
The membrane selection, trans-membrane pressure (TMP), temperature and stage cut in any stage within 1 section are uniform
Summary
Nanofiltration is a common process to purify fructooligosaccharides (FOS) from a mixture, which appears in natural sources such as chicory as a mixture of oligosaccharides with various degrees of polymerization (DP). Recent studies on the use of inhomogeneous cascades for FOS sep aration report an enhanced separation performance with only a limited number of stages [17,20]. This was achieved by modifying the stream configurations and operating conditions at each stage using a threestage cascade. We extend the McCabe-Thiele approach to design a non-ideal, inhomogeneous cascade for FOS puri fication This allows different operating conditions among the stages and yields the required membrane surface areas and pressure
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