Efecto de la filtración por membranas de acetato de celulosa en la distribución de jugo de manzana golden delicious: Validación experimental de un modelo de simulación

Abstract

Juice clarification through membranes is becoming an important technology due to its capacity to keep high quality and sensorial characteristics. In the clarification process, the particle size of the feed and the pore size of the membrane give important information about the characteristics and stabilization of the filtered juice. In this work we present an application of a previously reported novel computational simulation used to describe two apple juice filtration systems. Experimental data on the filtration of Golden Delicious (GD) apple juice after two different pre-filtration treatments was obtained and the effect on particle size distribution was studied. The experimental data was compared to the simulation results in which the final mean particle size of filtered juices is determined by the pore size distribution of the membrane and the feed particle size distribution. The error of the simulated values was <10% and therefore the model is valid as a first attempt to provide criteria for membrane selection in the filtration of apple juice and could be scaled to other filtration systems.