A comparison on the efficiency of PVDF and PEBAX membranes for the concentration of pomegranate juice by osmotic distillation process

The concentration of fruit juices is industrially performed in order to reduce the costs of the storage, packaging and handling. In this study, the osmotic distillation (OD) process, as a novel membrane technique, was used to concentrate the pomegranate juice at ambient temperature under atmospheric pressure. For this purpose, a concentrate calcium chloride salt solution was used as the osmotic stripping solution and a commercial polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane and a polyether-block-amide (PEBAX) membrane that prepared by the electrospinning technique were used as hydrophobic porous membranes in the OD process. The efficiency of the membranes for the pomegranate juice concentration was evaluated in terms of the product concentration and transmembrane water flux. It was observed that the PVDF membrane is more efficient for the pomegranate juice concentration by the OD process as the water flux was 2.4 and 1.5 kg/m2.h for the PVDF and PEBAX membranes, respectively.

Keywords:

Osmotic distillation (OD) , Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) , Polyether-block-amide (PEBAX) , Electrospun membrane , Pomegranate juice