Food Engineering
Mosatfa Soleymani; Vahid Hakimzadeh; Mostafa Shahidi Noghabi; Akram Arianfar
Abstract
IntroductionAppropriate and effective decolorization of raw and thin juice in sugar refineries is considered as an important process to obtain premium quality sugar, which due to the problems of its conventional process, membrane processes as effective and environmentally friendly processes can be used ...
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IntroductionAppropriate and effective decolorization of raw and thin juice in sugar refineries is considered as an important process to obtain premium quality sugar, which due to the problems of its conventional process, membrane processes as effective and environmentally friendly processes can be used in parts of sugar industries. Among the disadvantages of the usual methods to remove membrane fouling, it can be mentioned the destruction of the membrane, environmental pollution, the remaining detergents in the membrane and the product, especially in the pharmaceutical and food industries, and the increase in production costs. Therefore, it seems that physical methods such as pre-filtration of the incoming feed, using turbulent and pulse currents to prevent excessive compression of the gel layer formed on the membrane surface are more effective and have fewer disadvantages. One of the ways to change the flow of feed entering the membrane surface is bubbling, which causes mixing the flow and increases the tangential shear stress. In fact, the hydrodynamic force that creates bubbles causes both the dragging force and the lifting force and leads to the removal of fouling and reducing the phenomenon of concentration polarization. Materials and Methods In this research, an ultrafiltration membrane (MWCO=10 KDa) pilot with a flat module (effective surface 40 square centimeters) was used to purify raw beet juice (which had passed a stage of pre-treatment with microfiltration) at the temperature of about 30 degrees Celsius and a trans membrane pressure of 3.5 bar during the process. Nitrogen gas in the amount of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 liters per minute was used in two continuous and interrupted modes for bubbling. In this way, in the interrupted mode, after every 3 minutes of filtration, the filtration process was carried out with gas for one minute. The factors such as flux, fouling and membrane resistance as membrane efficiency's factors and parameters like color, purity and turbidity as purification factors was investigated in the form of a completely random design and compared with control filtration conditions (without bubble generation). The results of this research were statistically analyzed using SAS (version 1.9) and Microsoft Office Excel 2019 software. The average data of each test in three repetitions was compared with the least significant difference (LSD) test at the 95% level. Results and DiscussionIncreasing the amount of gas during the bubbling process improved the flow rate. Also, the results showed that the decreasing trend of the permeate flux at the gassing rate of 1.5 L/min was less than other treatments and more stable conditions were seen in the sap flux during the process. Also, the amount of flux in the interrupted form of bubbling showed that after the application of bubbling, although the amount of flux increased, but after that, during the ultra-refining process, the flux decreased again and did not remain constant at that level. But in general, despite the fact that the average flux was higher in the continuous process compared to the interrupted state, there was no significant difference between them. The results related to the amount of membrane fouling after applying the process showed that by applying bubble generation in both continuous and interrupted mods, the fouling was significantly reduced compared to the usual state of ultrafiltration. Also, as the amount of gas entering the feed stream increased, the membrane fouling decreased, which was slightly higher in the continuous state than in the interrupted mod. The overall hydrodynamic resistance of the membrane in different filtration modes showed that the difference between the overall resistance of the membrane in the ultrafiltration and the ultrafiltration process with gasification is quite significant. However, although the overall resistance of the membrane in the interrupted gassing state is higher than its continuous state due to more clogging, there is no significant difference between them (P<0.05).Since the flux changes and the amount of gel layer formation affect the properties of the purified syrup, the properties of the syrup were also investigated in the best flux created in two continuous and interrupted modes. The results showed that the continuous flow of gasification caused a small defect in the purification properties such as purity, color and turbidity due to the improvement of the permeate flow flux, which of course can be ignored in the sugar industry due to the improvement of the permeate flow flux. ConclusionTherefore, in general, it can be said that the discontinuous method, due to less gas consumption during bubbling and no significant difference in the amount of flux compared to the continuous mode, can be considered as the optimal mode of gasification during the experiments conducted in this research be placed.
Edris Arjeh; Mikhalil Piruzifard; Sajad Pirsa
Abstract
Introduction Raw sugar beet juice (RSBJ) is an intermediate of sugar beet processing obtaining by diffusion process. The RSBJ contains approximately 85% water, 13% sucrose, and 2% non-sugar compounds (impurities) and its purity ranges from 85 to 88%. Due to the low purity, the RSBJ should be subjected ...
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Introduction Raw sugar beet juice (RSBJ) is an intermediate of sugar beet processing obtaining by diffusion process. The RSBJ contains approximately 85% water, 13% sucrose, and 2% non-sugar compounds (impurities) and its purity ranges from 85 to 88%. Due to the low purity, the RSBJ should be subjected to purification process. The conventional purification occurs in a complex multistage process including pre-liming, main liming, first carbonation, and second carbonation. In liming step, lime milk (Ca(OH)2) is added to destabilize and precipitate the non-sugar compounds. Then the CO2 gas is added to precipitate the lime (as calcium carbonate). Although the application of lime is very well known but some impurities, including phenolic compounds, saponins, proteins and lipids pass through purification processing into the white sugar and cause serious difficulties. Due to the variety of compounds (dissolved or suspended) present in RSBJ and this fact that different processes may remove different types of compounds, various fining agents are required to clarification of raw juices. Bentonite, silica sol, gelatin and activated carbon are four types of natural adsorbents, which have been used in many applications, in different fields and processes, including the food industry. Differences in the nature of ionic charges of juice compounds and the fining agents induce neutralization, and flocculation and result in the removal of them from the juice. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the efficiency of bentonite, silica sol, gelatin and activated carbon in the removal of impurities (protein, saponin and phenolic compounds) causing floc in acidic beverage and improving the purification indexes of RSBJ (turbidity, color, ash and purity). Floc refers to the cloudy and turbid precipitate that forms in some sugar-sweetened carbonated soft drinks after standing for several days. While flocs are harmless, they are a visible defect and consumers don’t accept the soft drink product for aesthetic reasons. Currently, most researchers assume that saponins are primarily responsible for floc formation. However, there are some studies indicating that protein, phenolic compounds and lipids also play a role in floc formation.
Materials and methods: The RSBJ was regularly obtained from the sugar factory of Piranshahr, Iran. The RSBJ was sampled at the point just before the purification step and immediately transferred to the lab. Fining agents used for clarification including bentonite (Na–Ca Bentonite ERBSLÖH, Geisenheim, Germany), silica sol 15% (Baykisol 15%), Gelatin (type-A; 100 bloom, Erbigel, Germany) and activated carbon (CS-2000, Gostar Ghoumes CO. Iran) was provided by Azar kam Co. Urmia. Iran. For each experiment, 200 ml of the raw juice was subjected to various refining treatments. The RSBJ were refined at 75 °C for 100 min by fining agents. Fining agents were added to beet juice samples according to the preliminary experiments. After the completion of the clarifying process, juice samples were passed through a microfilter (45 µm) to removing formed floc. In order to compare the mentioned treatments (bentonite, silica sol, gelatin and activated carbon) with the conventional method, the RSBJ was also treated with lime-carbon dioxide in four stages (pre-liming (15 minutes at 85 ° C), main liming (15 min at 88 ° C), first carbonation (up to pH 11, 90 ° C) and second carbonation (up to pH 9, 92 ° C)). After applying the treatments, purity and ash content (by conductimetry method) was measured as the main purification indexes for assessing the quality of the juice samples. The total protein (by dye-binding method), total phenolic compound (by Folin-Ciocalteu reagent) and total saponin content (by vanillin-sulfuric acid method) was also determined as the compounds have a key role in formation of acid beverage floc.
Results and discussion: In this study, four refining agents of bentonite, silica sol, gelatin and activated carbon were used to improve the purification indexes of RSBJ and to remove non-sugar impurities causing floc in acidic beverage (such as carbonated beverages). Based on the ash and purity, it was showed that the applied adsorbents (bentonite, silica, gelatin and active charcoal) significantly improved the purification indexes of RSBJ. The results also showed that the ability of bentonite as a negative charged adsorbent was considerably higher than silica-sol in removing impurities (protein, saponin and phenolic compounds) causing floc, and improving the purification indexes (turbidity, color, ash and purity). So, the bentonite treatment reduced protein, phenolic compounds and saponin content of juice by 68, 61 and 40 %, respectively. The combination of gelatin and activated carbon as supplemental clarifiers with bentonite and silica also improved the parameters measured. In general, Bentonite-Activated carbon treatment had the best results, resulting in a reduction of 73, 87 and 85 % in protein, phenolic compounds and saponin, respectively. In this study, mentioned treatments were also compared with conventional treatment (lime-carbon dioxide) and it was observed that new treatments can be a good choice to combine or replace with conventional treatment.
