Microfiltration of post-fermentation broth with backflushing membrane cleaning

摘要

Separation of microorganism cells from broth is a very important stage in the recovery of fermentation products. The microfiltration of fermented glycerol solutions was studied. During this process, the filter cake building up on the membrane surface caused an increase of filtration resistances, resulting in the decrease of the permeate flux. In this work, short time reverse flow of permeate was used to remove the fouling layer after each cycle of the filtration. The applied periodical membrane cleaning led to minimization of the observed fouling effects. (c) 2014 Institute of Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences