What is it about?

Membrane distillation (MD) and its variants, Osmotic Membrane Distillation (OMD) is an important downstream process in biotechnology and food engineering which makes use of hydrophobic membranes to separate volatile liquids and/or liquid vapor from solutes present in a biological or food medium. It uses a temperature or an osmotic pressure differential between feed and permeate sides of the membrane to remove a volatile vapor phase from the feed. It finds use in concentration and recovery of products such as solvents (ethanol, acetone, ethyl acetate, etc), colors (water soluble colors and pigments), water (concentration of juices, beverages etc). It is unaffected by traditional membrane problems such as concentration polarization and large solute concentrations.

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Why is it important?

It is of importance since it offers a less energy intensive alternatives to traditional distillation (because of higher vapor space and smaller footprint) and reverse osmosis (because it is unaffected by osmotic pressure in case of MD).

Perspectives

MD and OMD still occupies a niche area, but with promising applications in industry. Recently manufacturers have developed large sytems for proven applications like water desalination and water vapor recovery. The most promising applications would be in fruit juice concentration where it has had limited commercial application. I feel with the development of new hydrophobic membranes and modules there will be an increased interest in converting a laboratory curiosity into a commercial process

Dr Sanjay Narayan Nene
Contract Research, Design & Proof of Concept

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Membrane Distillation and Osmotic Membrane Distillation in Downstream Processing, Current Biochemical Engineering, August 2015, Bentham Science Publishers,
DOI: 10.2174/2212711902999150730160949.
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