Recovery of aroma compounds from seafood cooking juices by membrane processes

Abstract

Cooking juices are fish industry effluents with high organic and salt contents, typically 10–20gCODL−1 and 20–30gsaltL−1. They contain valuable substances (mainly aromas and proteins) that can be recovered, thereby significantly lowering treatment cost and offering a commercial gain for the food industry.The use of membrane processes to concentrate aromas in the cooking juices of fish and shellfish/crustaceans is reviewed, and some issues related to the technical and economic feasibility of industrial processes are highlighted.The issue of process design and economic evaluation is illustrated by a case study of a batch process concentrating shrimp aromas by reverse osmosis, and desalting juices by electrodialysis. The analysis shows that the sizing of this integrated process does not require systematic evaluations of CAPEX and OPEX, but can be done by considering only two simple criteria, namely minimizing energy consumption and the total membrane surface installed. In addition, when the characteristics of the processed juices change in time, the best solution should be determined by considering not only the process costs but also the ability of the process to adequately treat juices with different characteristics.