%A Nora’aini ALI, Fadhilati HASSAN, Sofiah HAMZAH %T Preparation and characterization of asymmetric ultrafiltration membrane for effective recovery of proteases from surimi wash water %0 Journal Article %D 2012 %J Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. %J Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering %@ 2095-0179 %R 10.1007/s11705-012-1288-z %P 184-191 %V 6 %N 2 %U {https://journal.hep.com.cn/fcse/EN/10.1007/s11705-012-1288-z %8 2012-06-05 %X

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.