BACKGROUND: In this research, a pervaporation process was used to recover volatile aroma compounds from lemon juice using a poly(octyl methyl siloxane) membrane. The majority of previous studies have been with binary model feed systems, while the results with actual feed mixtures did not always match those with model feeds. In order to successfully optimize the pervaporation process, it is essential to work with actual fruit juice. The influences of various operating parameters such as feed flow rate, feed temperature and permeate pressure on the permeate flux and selectivity were investigated. For this purpose, three compounds that make a significant contribution to lemon juice aroma, namely, alpha-pinene, beta-pinene and limonene were studied. RESULTS: It was shown that decreasing the permeate pressure increased both permeation flux and enrichment factor, while an increase in feed temperature increased the water flux more significantly than the aroma compounds flux, resulting in lower enrichment factor. Also, the results indicated that feed flow rate had no significant effect on the performance of the process. CONCLUSION: The membrane used was found to be very selective towards alpha-pinene, beta-pinene and limonene. It can be concluded that pervaporation is an attractive technology for the recovery of lemon aroma compounds as it yields good separation and operates under mild conditions. (C) 2010 Society of Chemical Industry