Simulating the ultrafiltration of whey proteins isolate using a mixture model

Abstract

Ultrafiltration (UF) is widely used in the fractionation and concentration of milk proteins. During this process, proteins concentrate at the membrane surface, increasing the resistance of the membrane system, and decreasing permeate flux leaving the process unit. In this study we use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to examine the UF of whey proteins. Specifically we employ a multiphase mixture model to predict the solid concentration and velocity distributions near the membrane, under both dead-end and crossflow modes. As whey proteins have a fairly compact globular structure we use hard sphere theory to model the suspension permeability and osmotic pressure: Notably these properties dep..