Preparation and characterization of asymmetric ultrafiltration membrane for effective recovery of proteases from surimi wash water

Abstract

The wash water generated from the surimi processing industry contains a large amount of proteases which are widely used in the food and biotechnology industries. Asymmetric polysulfone and polyethersulfone ultrafiltration (PSf-UF and PES-UF) membranes with three different polymer concentrations were screened for their abilities to recover proteases from surimi wash water. In-house fabricated membranes were prepared via a simple dry/wet phase inversion technique and were characterized in terms of permeability coefficient, membrane morphology and molecular weight cut-off (MWCO). The ability of the UF membranes to remove commercial proteases was tested at various pressures (up to 10 bars). The membrane with the best performance, 15 wt-% PSf-UF, was further tested with actual surimi wash water. The effect of the pH of the feed solution (4 to 8) in the pre-treatment stage was also evaluated to recover the highest amount of proteases. The highest retention of protease was 96% with a flux of 25.6 L/(m²·h) which was achieved with the 15 wt-% PSf-UF membrane.

Key words： membrane; ultrafiltration; proteases; surimi wash water

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), for sponsoring this work under Grant No. 52053 and to the Engineering Science Department at the University Malaysia Terengganu.

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