Ultrafiltered skim milk concentrated to 20-22% solids was hydrolyzed with a mixture of proteases from Aspergillus oryzae and an acid protease from Aspergillus niger. The enzyme preparation from A. oryzae did not produce bitterness, so the effects of its hydrolyzing action on the whipping properties of the retentate in liquid and powdered forms were examined. Its effect on the amount of soluble nitrogen in the powder was also determined. After inoculation of 250 ml retentate with .05% w/v enzyme, the samples were held in a 45°C water bath. The samples thickened with increasing hydrolysis until syneresis occurred. They also took on a slightly ropy or slimy appearance after thickening and before syneresis. Hydrolysis was stopped by removing from the 45°C bath and holding in an 80°C bath for 35 minutes. When cooled to refrigerator temperature, retentate samples produced a stable whip with fine bubbles and firm but soft peaks. Air capacity of whipped samples decreased with increasing hydrolysis time and retentate solids. Stability increased with increasing solids and longer hydrolysis times. Skim milk retentate to be dried was concentrated to 20-24% solids and reconstituted to 20% before whipping. Hydrolysis time up to 20 minutes before enzyme denaturation did not have an effect on the air capacity of the whipped reconstituted powder. Air capacity decreased as the retentate solids increased. Whip stability increased slightly then decreased with increasing hydrolysis. Whip stability was impaired by protein denaturation in the powder during the drying process. Soluble nitrogen in the powder, as determined by the Harland-Ashworth procedure, increased with increasing hydrolysis and decreased with increasing solids.

A new method for manufacture of natural cheese was developed using 5X ultrafiltered whole milk retentate. The retentate was prefermented to pH 5.0-5.2 before curd formation to simplify the cheese making process. It was demonstrated that the process can be made commercially feasible. Ultrafiltration and diafiltration of whole milk were done so that the desired level of residual lactose was left in the retentate. Retentate was inoculated with lactic starter culture and incubated (prefermented) until all lactose was converted to lactic acid. The final pH stabilized at about 5.0-5.2; the desired pH of the cheese curd. Incubation at 25°C allowed the retentate to remain liquid during prefermentation and easily pumped through pipes. After prefermentation, retentate was passed through a mechanical curd former where rennet was injected and mixed. The retentate-rennet mixture coagulated as it traveled upward through a cylinder. The curd emerged from the curd former and was cut into cubes by a grid of knives. The curd cubes were treated for removal of moisture by cooking in liquid and evaporation under vacuum. After moisture removal, curd was drained. salted and pressed. Cheddaring and milling were unnecessary. Experiments were performed to determine proper methods for preparing retentate. Diafiltration level was significantly related to lactose concentration in retentate (p=.OOO 1) and final pH of fermented retentate (p=.OOO1). Acidified permeate and acidified, deionized water were evaluated as cooking liquids. Cheese made from curd cooked in permeate had acid defects. but curd cooked in water produced cheese with a pH similar to conventionally produced Cheddar cheese. Moisture content of all finished cheese was excessive for Cheddar cheese. Body and texture of cheese made from curd cooked in water was close to conventionally produced Cheddar cheese. Diafiltration may be used to control final pH of fermented retentate. Prefermentation of retentate prior to cheese making will simplify equipment and shorten manufacturing time. Commercial application of the process is discussed.

Yes / Reverse Osmosis (RO) process has become one of the most widely utilised technologies for brackish water desalination for its capabilities of producing high-quality water. This paper emphasis on investigating the feasibility of implementing the retentate recycle design on the original design of an industrial medium-sized multistage and multi-pass spiral wound brackish water RO desalination plant (1200 m³/day) of Arab Potash Company (APC) located in Jordan. Specifically, this research explores the impact of recycling the high salinity stream of the 1st pass (at different recycled percentages) to the feed stream on the process performance indicators include, the fresh water salinity, overall recovery rate, and specific energy consumption. The simulation is carried out using an earlier model developed by the same authors for the specified RO plant using gPROMS suits. This confirmed the possibility of increasing the product capacity by around 3% with 100% recycle percentage of the high salinity retentate stream.

The effect of ultrafiltration, diafiltration, and preacidification of milk on the partition of specific milk components between retentate and permeate was studied. Percent retention (for any component Y) was determined as: [ l - (%Y in soln. permeate/%Y in soln. retentate)] X 100 where %Y in soln. = [%Y/(%Y + %H 20)] Simultaneous samples of retentate and permeate were taken at several points during each process. Percent retention of total solids, fat, total protein, rennet clottable nitrogen, lactose, total calcium, ionic calcium, sodium, phosphorous, and riboflavin was determined at each sampling point. Percent retention of β-carotene, vitamin B12, retinol, and zinc was determined at different stages of ultrafiltration only. As UF proceeded, percent retention of total solids, total protein, total calcium, ionic calcium, sodium, phosphorous, and riboflavin increased. Percent retention of lactose was not affected and was 0-4%. Percent retention of fat, rennet clottable nitrogen, zinc, retinal, β-carotene, and vitamin B12 was 99-100%. As diafiltration proceeded, percent retention of total solids, lactose, total calcium, ionic calcium, sodium, phosphorous, and riboflavin increased. Percent retention of these nutrients was increased when compared to ultrafiltration alone. Milks with lower pH values (resulting from preacidification) also had lower percent retention of total calcium and phosphorous than milks with normal pH values. Percent retention of sodium was lower during ultrafiltration and diafiltration of acidified milk when compared to ultrafiltration and diafiltration of normal milk. Percent retention of other nutrients was not affected by acidification. Loss of whey proteins into permeate resulted in a lower recovery of total protein after diafiltration than ultrafiltration alone and ultrafiltration of acidified milk. These proteins were determined to be α-lactogobulin and β-lactogobulin.

Whole milks were adjusted to pH 5.8, 6.2, or 6. 7 with HCl and batch pasteurized at 63°C for 30 min. Each was concentrated 5:1 (40% total solids) through a single tube polysulfone membrane Abcor ultrafiltration unit. Lactose (L), casein hydrolysate (CH), and one of two brands of yeast extract (YE1, YE2) were added into cooled retentates at 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0. 7 or 0.9% and equilibrated overnight at 4°C. Five percent proteinase positive (Prt+) Streptococcus cremoris UC 310+ (v/w) milk based culture was added. Unfortified retentate was also inoculated with 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0. 7 or 0.9% starter and pH readings were taken on all samples for 24 h during incubation at 23°C. Similar substrates were inoculated with proteinase negative (Prt-) S. cremoris UC 310-. Lactose had no significant effect on acid production. Casein hydrolysate had a slight positive effect. Yeast extract had a significant effect at all preacidification levels and a significant difference was also noticed between the brands. Mean times required for the proteinase positive culture to reach pH 5.1 in 5x retentate from milk acidified to pH 5.8 were 24, 12, 10, 10, and 24 h for L, CH, YE1, YE2, and the control respectively. Proteinase negative variants of this strain had mean times of >24 h, 14 h, 11 h, 11 h, and >24 h respectively. These time differences were significantly different between Prt+ and Prt- variants. A minimum concentration of 0.2% yeast extract produced the most stimulation while greater quantities provided no additional benefit. Taste panelists were unable to detect yeast extract in retentates fermented by either culture variant.

Manufacture of white soft cheese from ultrafiltered whole cows• milk involved acidification of pasteurized homogenized whole milk to pH 6.0 with phosphoric or citric acid. The preacidified milk was ultrafiltered at 54 °C until 60% of original milk weight was removed as permeate, diafiltered with deionized water equal to 38.5% of the original milk and concentrated by UF (4.8 fold) to pre-cheese (38% total solid). The pre-cheese was heated to 76.7°C/16 sec, 71 .l°C/l6 sec (HTST) and 7l.l°C/l5 min (controlled water bath), inoculated with 2% starter culture (Streptococcus cremoris), renneted (10 ml/100 lb retentate) and placed in one pound plastic containers in which coagulation took place (8-10 min). Salt (1 .5%) was added on the top of parchment paper placed under the lid, and the curd was incubated at 85°F. The most acceptable cheese was from ultrafiltered retentate heated for 16 sec at 76.7°C before cheese making. Organoleptic tests showed that samples highest in calcium content ranked highest in acceptability. Acidification with citric acid removed more calcium than phosphoric acid and resulted in softer cheese than the control cheese (non-acidified). Slight bitterness was observed when excessive starter and low salt (NaCl) concentration were used. Addition of salt to the retentate prior to heating caused thickening of the retentate before 70°C was reached. Extending the heating time increased the tendency toward mealiness in the cheese.

Yes / Reverse Osmosis (RO) is one of the most widely used technologies for wastewater treatment for the removal of toxic impurities, such as phenol and phenolic compounds from industrial effluents. In this research, performance of multi-stage RO wastewater treatment system is evaluated for the removal of chlorophenol from wastewater using model-based techniques. A number of alternative configurations with recycling of permeate, retentate, and permeate-retentate streams are considered. The performance is measured in terms of total recovery rate, permeate product concentration, overall chlorophenol rejection and energy consumption and the effect of a number of operating parameters on the overall performance of the alternative configurations are evaluated. The results clearly show that the permeate recycling scheme at fixed plant feed flow rate can remarkably improve the final chlorophenol concentration of the product despite a reduction in the total recovery rate.

The Reverse Osmosis (RO) process has been considered to be one of the most widely utilised techniques for brackish water desalination for its capabilities to produce high-quality water. The RO process characterised by its low energy consumption compared to thermal distillation processes, leading to reduced overall water production cost. To systematically understand the transport phenomena of solvent and solutes via the membrane texture, several mathematical models were developed. This interestingly aids to conduct a huge amount of simulation and optimisation studies to judge the influence of control variables on the performance indexes and to adjust the key variables at optimum values to realise optimum production indexes. In this research, a specific accurate model for a single spiral wound RO process has been successfully developed and used to build accurate models for the multistage brackish water RO desalination process of two different designs. The robustness of the model developed was confirmed via validation against the experimental data collected from simple design of RO system and complicated design of RO system of Arab Potash Company (APC). This is followed by a thorough simulation of the RO process to explore the influence of operating conditions on the process performance indicators. Recently, several contributions were made in this thesis that specifically comprises the improvement of the original design of brackish water RO desalination process. The influence of a retentate recycle design is investigated on the process performance. Moreover, evaluation and minimisation of specific energy consumption (expressed in kWh/m3 of freshwater production) is carried out on the simple and complicated designs of RO process by implementing an energy recovery device. Also, the most suitable brand of membranes was explored for the RO system from a set of different brands of membrane to attain the highest-performance rejection at lowest energy consumption compared to the original membrane. Furthermore, a single optimisation framework was developed to mitigate the specific energy consumption of simple and complicated designs of brackish water RO desalination process. Finally, a thermodynamic limitations and exergy analysis of the complicated design of RO system are outlined via a thoroughly study to investigate the locations of high exergy destruction. These contributions were verified as they promoted the separation performance at a significant energy saving. / Mutah University, Jordan

Yes / In recent times two or more desalination processes have been combined to form integrated systems that have been widely used to resolve the limitations of individual processes as well as producing high performance systems. In this regard, a simple integrated system of the Multi Effect Distillation (MED)/Thermal Vapour Compression (TVC) and Permeate Reprocessing Reverse Osmosis (PRRO) process was developed by the same authors and confirmed its validity after a comparison study against other developed configurations. However, this design has a considerable amount of retentate flowrate and low productivity. To resolve this issue, two novel designs of MED and double reverse osmosis (RO) processes including Permeate and Retentate Reprocessing designs (PRRP and RRRO) are developed and modelled in this paper. To systematically assess the consistency of the presented designs, the performance indicators of the novel designs are compared against previous simple designs of MED and PRRO processes at a specified set of operating conditions. Results show the superiority of the integrated MED and double permeate reprocessing design. This has specifically achieved both economic and environmental advantages where total productivity is increased by around 9% and total retentate flowrate (disposed to water bodies) is reduced by 5% with a marginally reduced energy consumption.

This study was to investigate theory and application of Osmotic Distillation (OD). OD is a new novel membrane separation process used for the concentration of aqueous solutions such as fruit juices without the application of heat. The present work was undertaken to investigate flux limitations focusing on feedside, membrane and stripper side characteristics of OD. Once the limiting areas were identified, further studies were undertaken to determine methods of minimizing those limitations without losing the quality and integrity of the liquid feed. A laboratory scale OD system was used to simulate the industrial process which takes place during the production of grape juice concentrate for the fruit juice industry. Results of a UF pretreatment study showed that the use of UF membranes with pore diameters of 0.1 fÝm or less as a pretreatment for the subsequent OD of grape juice resulted in significant increases in OD flux over that observed for juice not subjected to UF. The study of the physical properties of the feed played an important role in the explanation of the OD process. The increase in OD flux was attributed to a reduction in juice viscosity as the result of the removal of protein and other high molecular weight components. Apart from an increase in OD flux, UF pretreatment of the grape juice proved to be beneficial in other areas of the OD process. HPLC measurements showed that the normal concentration of fermentable sugars in standard 68 oBrix concentrate can be achieved at a lower Brix value in feed subjected to UF pretreatment, further reducing the need to handle highly viscous feeds. UF pretreatment also resulted in an increase in juice surface tension consequently reducing the tendency for membrane wet-out to occur. The study of the deoxygenation of the feed solution shows that the removal of dissolved gases by the pre boiling method and the perstraction with chemical reaction (PCR) method both had a positive affect on OD flux. Pre boiling the brine resulted in an indirect reduction in dissolved oxygen in the feed. Pre boiling both the feed and brine, further increased the flux. Throughout the PCR study, it was evident that stripper side mass transfer of O2 was not limited by flowrate but was limited by higher stripper concentration. However, the latter had an insignificant effect when the sulfite-oxygen reaction was catalysed. The use of a catalyst and increase in temperature gave a significant improvement in overall mass transfer coefficient. Ten types of hydrophobic microporous membranes were tested for their influence on OD flux. While the pore diameter is a considerable factor in mass transport of gases through the membrane, it was also noted that the type of membrane material used had an affect on the overall mass transfer. All top three performing membranes had pore diameters of 0.2 x 10-6 m and were made from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The choice of brine to use as the stripper was based on criteria that were confirmed by the brine studies performed here. The best performing stripper solutions demonstrating the greatest improvement in OD flux over the most commonly used brines, NaCl, CaCl2 and CH3COOK were aqueous solutions of potassium salts of phosphoric acid, pyrophosphoric acid and blends thereof. These salts agreed with all the required characteristics of a suitable brine, demonstrating high solubility rates, supporting the ability to lower water vapour pressure. The study of the corrosion effects of brine salts confirmed the phosphate salts are superior demonstrating some of the lowest corrosion rates and highest pH.