Membrane Emulsification Equipment and Industrialization

Abstract

The principle of innovative membrane emulsification technology is based on use of pressure to force the dispersed phase to permeate through a microporous membrane into the continuous phase, forming uniform emulsion. Responding to the specific requests from the emulsion manufacturing industry, three subdivided membrane emulsification technologies including cross-flow membrane emulsification (CME) technology, also called direct membrane emulsification technique; premix membrane emulsification (PME) technology, also called rapid membrane emulsification technique; and rotary membrane emulsification (RME) technology have been developed successfully. At the beginning of CME technology development, the hydrophilic glass porous membrane was used. PME technology involves using high pressure to force a coarse pre-emulsion to pass through microporous membrane and yielding smaller uniform emulsion droplets. Compared with CME and PME, RME technology is developed for preparing microspheres with large particle size of 100 μm and above. Membrane emulsification technology has been applied in industrialization for sustained release microspheres preparation by a group.