Filtration Behavior of Baker's Yeast Suspensions at Very High Concentrations

Abstract

Pritchard et al. observed the phenomenon that the flux began to rise when the baker's yeast suspension was concentrated to a very high concentration in a thin-channel membrane module under laminar conditions. A further investigation of this interesting finding through both filtration experiments and rheological measurements has been conducted using baker's yeast suspensions. The separate filtrations of the suspensions and their supernatants suggest that for baker's yeast suspensions at very high concentrations there might be no cake layer. On the basis of the above results, an alternative to the normal membrane concentration process is put forward. Using this novel approach, particularly in its batch mode, a low-concentration feed can be directly transferred into a high-concentration product at a much higher flux.