Pomegranate juice concentration using osmotic distillation with membrane contactor

Abstract

This study aims at evaluating the effect of fouling on the performance of polypropylene hollow fiber membrane contactor with feed-in-shell flow configuration for the concentration of pomegranate juice through osmotic distillation (OD). The juice was concentrated to 52.0 ± 0.3°Brix, reaching a maximum flux of 1.053 kg.m−2.h−1 at a temperature of 25 °C, stripping solution (CaCl2) concentration of 6 M and feed and stripping solution flow rates of 0.012 m3.h−1 in a total recycled processing time of 310 min. Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis showed that the fouling caused the membrane pores to be blocked during the prolonged operation. Repeated experimentation showed that the stringent membrane cleaning protocol almost doubled the water flux. The quality parameters (total soluble solids, total acidity, and total sugars) were well retained after concentration of pomegranate juice through the OD process.