Separation Science and Technology, Vol.54, No.3, 360-369, 2019
Degumming of crude vegetable oil by membrane separation: Probing structure-performance and stability of PVDF membranes
Stability of polymeric membrane in organic solvent during degumming process has been the main issue. In this work, various PVDF membranes were prepared under controlled conditions, characterized and tested for their degumming performance of crude peanut oil miscella. The optimally prepared PVDF membrane showed excellent phospholipid (gum) rejection of 95% with hexane and miscella permeate fluxes of 70 LMH and 46 LMH, respectively when operated at 10 bar and room temperature. At initial stage, the flux kept declining to about 10% for the best membrane but it remained stable afterwards.