Determining Optimum Conditions for Sugarcane Juice Refinement by Pilot Plant Dead-end Ceramic Micro-filtration

Authors
B. Farmani 1
J. Hesari 1
M. H. Haddadekhodaparast 2
S. Aharizad 3
1 Department of Food Science and Technology, Ahar Faculty of Agriculture, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran.
2 Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University, Mashhad, Islamic Republic of Iran.
3 Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran.
Abstract
The conditions for the refinement of clarified sugarcane juice, including temperature (50o, 60o and 70oC) and pressure (0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5 bars) by micro-filtration membrane technology were investigated. The raw sugarcane juice was initially pre-filtrated with lime and then the juice obtained (clarified juice) processed using a ceramic micro-filter mem-brane (0.2 micrometer). The characteristics investigated included brix, polarity (sucrose percent), turbidity, color and purity. The results showed that the effects of different proc-ess conditions with micro-filtration on reduction of turbidity and color were significant at probably <0.01 and probably <0.05, respectively. For other characteristics, no significant difference was observed. Finally, a temperature of 70oC and transmembrane pressure of 1.5 bar were determined as the optimum conditions for ceramic micro-filtration. Mem-brane processing at 70oC and 1.5 bars reduced the turbidity, viscosity and color of clari-fied juice 56.25%, 16.67% and 6.49%, respectively, and increased 0.87 units of purity.

Keywords

Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology
Volume 10, Issue 4
September and October 2008
Pages 351-357