Concentration of Fruit Juices by Vacuum Membrane Distillation: A Review
Concentration of Fruit Juices by Vacuum Membrane Distillation: A Review
Concentration of Fruit Juices by Vacuum Membrane Distillation: A Review
Abstract
1. Introduction
In order to increase shelf life of product, as well as to reduce their liquid volume and so
the transportation cost, food products are concentrated by the different type of
membrane processes. Fruit juices have been traditionally concentrated by multi-stage
50 Shukla Saurabh Kumar et al
vacuum evaporation, which results into several adverse effects on the product quality
as degradation of certain natural antioxidant components, loss of amino acids and
discoloration in the final product.
Aroma profiles of different fruit juices usually cover a mixture of a large number
of volatile organic compounds. The individual aroma of any fruit components differs
according to their molecular structure, which defines the solubility, the boiling point,
and the volatility of each type of compound (Ramteke, Eipeson, & Patwardhan, 1990).
Aroma components are present in different concentrations and combinations, where
the concentrations of individual aroma substances in common fruit juices usually range
from less than 1 to 20 ppm (_Sulc, 1984).
The process of concentration of fruit juices are the one of the basic unit operations
of fruit juice technology, in which the solids content of the juice is increased from 10%
to 12% up to 65–75% by weight (Sulc, 1984). The fruit juices are concentrated to
reduce its volume, which in turn lowers storage, packaging and transport costs. The
increased concentration of solids also helps in preventing microbial spoilage of the
juice concentrate (Downes, 1990).
In conventional concentration technique, the juice concentration step is usually
coupled with aroma-stripping and the stripped aroma concentrate is later added back to
the concentrated juice (Sulc, 1984). Nowdays, the predominantly used method for fruit
juice concentration and aroma-stripping comprises one or several multistage falling
film vacuum evaporators are connected to a separate aroma recovery plant. In it, the
volatile aroma compounds are removed in the vapor phase obtained through falling
film evaporation and subsequently trapped by condensation in an aroma recovery unit,
where the efficiency of the trapping varies depending on the particular conditions and
on the aroma compounds in question (Piggott, Paterson, & Clyne, 1993)
side is evaporated continuously and goes into the vacuum side. At the same time , the
vapor entering the vacuum side is vacuumed outside the membrane cell to be
condensed continuously. The vacuum membrane distillation has greater flux than other
forms of membrane distillation, because a differential pressure lies between the vapor-
liquid interface and the vacuum side.
that of the original juice especially regarding the retention of bright natural color and
pleasant aroma, which are considerably lost during thermal evaporation. Furthermore,
among all the concentration treatments applied, only thermally evaporated samples
resulted formation of HMF. Phenolic compounds, organic acids and sugars were very
stable against all concentration processes, including thermal evaporation.
VMD is also capable of the concentration of different juice up to a high solid
content. In a study of black-current juice concentration, it was found that final
concentration of the blackcurrant juice reached 58.280 Brix at the end of the batch
measurements. This high concentration prevents the juice from deterioration. In this
study it was found that a few degree centigrade increases in the driving force
influenced significantly the distillate flux and the operation time of the VMD process.
The result of the analytical measurements shows that the density, TAC and AC of the
black-currant juice increase proportionally to the increase of the TSS in the measured
range (Aron etal.).
In concentration of citrus fruit juices and the fruits containing oily constituents
(such as limonene in orange juice), membrane wetting may occur due to high affinity
of hydrophobic membrane material with such compounds. Coating of membrane with
hydrophilic polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) (Mansouri & Fane, 1999) and
alginate (Xu et al., 2004) has been proposed to overcome this problem. Recently,
Chanachai et al. (2010) studied the coating of hydrophobic membrane PVDF with
chitosan, a highly hydrophilic polymer, for protection against wetting by oils from fruit
juice. The results indicated that the coated membrane well protected the membrane
against wetting-out and could maintain stable flux. Coated membranes used to
concentrate the oil solution (limonene 2%, v/v) for 5 h were not wetted out during flux
measurement and no visual damage was observed indicating the stability on the base
membrane.
7. Conclusion
Studies suggest that VMD is a very promising technique for gentle aroma stripping of
thermally sensitive fruit aroma compounds. However, VMD is the only one of several
known MD techniques. Other MD techniques include sweeping gas MD, osmotic MD
and direct contact MD. VMD results in many advantages, with respect to conventional
separation techniques, and, from an economic point of view, is comparable to
alternative membrane processes, such as pervaporation. With respect to other MD
configurations, VMD allows to reach higher partial pressure gradients and, hence,
higher fluxes and productivity of juices. Thus, VMD can be proposed as the most
promising alternative to conventional thermal evaporation technique for fruit juices.
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