Membrane Filtration of Lignocellulosic Hydrolyzates: Comparison of Crossflow and Dead-End Microfiltration

Depleting oil reserves have encouraged the development of technologies to harness the natural resources to sustain the energy needs. Renewable lignocellulosic biomasses have been focus of many studies but advances in the purification and recovering of the products from the product medium has been very limited. Amongst many separation processes membrane separation offers better prospects to simplify purification operations, offers valuable by-products, decrease energy consumption and reduce water requirements. A membrane separation system can be either crossflow or dead end and both have unique advantages and disadvantages. While Cross flow filtration offers higher feed velocity i.e. cross flow velocity and better control over cake layer development, dead end filtration can result in energy savings. The focus of this study is to characterize the flow and the effect of cake layer development under different pressures and flow rate. A detailed comparison of flow characteristics has been studied. It is also found that the temperature of the hydrolyzate influences separation in a very significant manner.