Ceramic membrane fouling in ultrafiltration process of chicken egg white aqueous solution

This paper presents an experimental study on chicken egg white solution ultrafiltration, where membrane fouling has been the main point of concern. Separation process has been performed with a 150 kDa tubular ceramic TiO2/Al2O3 membrane. The operating parameters have been set as follows: transmembrane pressure 105–310 kPa, cross-flow velocity 2.73–4.55 m/s, pH 5 and constant temperature of 293 K. Resistance-in-series model has been used to calculate total resistance and its components. The experimental data have been described with four pore blocking models (complete blocking, intermediate blocking, standard blocking and cake filtration). The results obtained show that the dominant fouling mechanism is represented by cake filtration model.