Crossflow filtration of washed and unwashed yeast suspensions at constant shear under nominally sub-critical conditions

Operation at sub-critical fluxes can be used to control membrane fouling. The original definition of the critical flux stated that operation was sub-critical if no or negligible fouling occurred. Over time there has been a relaxing of the criteria and many now consider a low rather than zero rate of fouling to be indicative of sub-critical operation especially when dealing with complex feeds. Here the region of low fouling is termed “nominally sub-critical”. Unwashed yeast, washed yeast and extra polymeric substance (EPS) suspensions were filtered at controlled fluxes to investigate the role of cells and soluble components in nominally sub-critical conditions using ultrafiltration (UF) and microfiltration (MF) membranes. As the UF membrane could not be effectively cleaned it was not used in the later part of the study. Tracking of membrane resistance, image of the 0.2 μm membranes was continued through the whole study. After the initial increase, image rises very slowly, increasing on average only 0.4% after each experiment and cleaning cycle. For the MF membranes, the rate of fouling increased with increasing feed concentration, increasing membrane pore size and decreasing shear stress. The effect of increasing shear stress was to reduce the amount of reversible fouling but the irreversible component was invariant with shear stress for the range studied. Also the rate and reversibility of fouling were found to be sensitive to changes in pH. The sum of the rates of transmembrane pressure (TMP) rise for washed yeast cells and EPS suspensions were in all cases found to be lower than that for unwashed yeast. The origin of the additional resistance is discussed and other relevant literature reviewed.